Jerusalem Religious Power and Judaism

Home , Caius (presbyter), Jerusalem (Mendelssohn), Moses Mendelssohn

Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difﬁculty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type. – When a sentence (like this one) is preceded by – followed by a space, that is supplied by Mendelssohn, who uses it as a kind of quasi-paragraph-break. The division into subsections with titles is added in this version. So are the titles of the two Sections, though they are obviously what Mendelssohn intended. Many occurrences of italics are added in this version, to aid comprehension; but a remarkable number of them are Mendelssohn’s. First launched: June 2011

Contents

SECTION I: RELIGIOUS POWER 1 1. Some history of our problem...... 1 2. State and religion: general points...... 5 3. What rights are...... 9 4. Benevolence and beneﬁcence...... 10 5. Rights and duties in the state of nature...... 10 6. Parents and children...... 11 7. Marriage...... 12 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn

8. Transfer of goods...... 13 9. An analysis of promising...... 15 10. Nonsense about duties towards God...... 16 11. Church and state: actions...... 17 12. Church and state: thoughts...... 18 13. Church government. Oaths...... 19 14. Beliefs as requirements for ofﬁce...... 21 15. Summary of Section I...... 23 16. Excommunication...... 25

SECTION II: JUDAISM 27 1. Some good people...... 27 2. A reviewer who missed the point...... 28 3. Fidelity to the Mosaic religion...... 31 4. Judaism and Christianity...... 32 5. Revealed religion...... 34 6. Mankind and progress...... 37 7. More about revelation...... 38 8. Speaking versus writing...... 41 9. Abstraction and signs...... 42 10. The invention of alphabets...... 44 11. Uses and misuses of language...... 46 12. How idolatry began...... 46 13. How to think about a foreign religion...... 47 14. The failed Pythagorean attempt...... 49 15. The purpose of Jewish ceremonial law...... 50 16. God’s power, God’s love...... 52 17. God’s punishments...... 53 18. A summary account of early Judaism...... 55 19. Judaism and civil law...... 58 20. The unity trap...... 60 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn

Glossary beliefs: This is usually a translation of Gesinnungen. See science: In early modern times this word applied to any body also thoughts and frames of mind. The choice among these of knowledge or theory that is (perhaps) axiomatised and three translations is dictated by context. (certainly) conceptually highly organised. That is what lies behind Mendelssohn’s implying on page 40 that Maimonides benevolence: Most occurrences of this in the present ver- wanted religion to be one of the ‘sciences’. sion would go better with ‘beneﬁcence’ (i.e. doing good rather than merely wanting to do good); but if this is a mistake it is Sitten: A plural noun that can be translated by a variety Mendelssohn’s, because there’s no other possible translation of English words, which boil down to something like ‘a of his Wohlwollen. people’s morality, basic customs, ingrained attitudes and expectations about how people will behave, ideas about what Children of Israel: The Jewish people. is decent etc. or any subset of those’. It is left untranslated eternal: See entry on ‘temporal’. here because no good English word does that job. frames of mind: This translates Gesinnungen. See also temporal: It means ‘having to do with this world as distinct beliefs and thoughts. On page5 all three translations of from the heavenly world of the after-life’. The underlying the word occur within a couple of consecutive paragraphs. thought is that this world is in time (‘temporal’) whereas the after-life is eternal in some way that puts it outside time. House of Jacob: The Jewish people. These English words had those meanings at the time when luxury: This meant something like: extreme or inordinate Mendelssohn wrote, and they are inevitable translations of indulgence in sensual pleasures. A ‘luxurious’ person was his zeitlich and ewig. Note that on page4 Mendelssohn someone wholly given to the pleasures of the senses—-mostly clearly implies that what is eternal is in time. but not exclusively the pleasures of eating and drinking. thoughts: This is usually a translation of Gesinnungen, a moral person: An entity that counts as a person in the word with a very broad meaning. See also beliefs and frames context of rights, wrongs, blame, and so on. of mind. Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 1. Some history of our problem

SECTION I: RELIGIOUS POWER

1. Some history of our problem Despotism has the advantage of being consistent. How- ever oppressive its demands may look from a common- One of the most difficult tasks of political theory concerns: sense point of view, they are coherent and systematic. For •state and religion, every question it has its settled answer: ‘Stop worrying •civil and ecclesiastical constitution, about borders—he who has everything no longer asks “How •secular and churchly authority. much?”.’ Similarly with ecclesiastical government on Roman Catholic principles: it can deal with every detail in every The task is to relate these pillars of social life to one another state of affairs, and yet it is as it were all of a piece. Grant in such a way that they are in balance, rather than becoming all its demands, and you’ll at least know where you stand. burdens on social life or weighing down its foundations more Your structure is completely built, and perfect calm reigns than they help to uphold it. Men have struggled with this throughout. Admittedly it’s only the dreadful calm which, as for centuries, occasionally getting somewhere with it—but Montesquieu says, prevails during the evening in a fortress only in practical settlements rather than any theoretical that will be taken by storm during the night. Yet anyone solution. Some thought it right to separate these different for whom happiness is tranquility in doctrine and life won’t relations of social man into ·two· moral entities—·one for find a better guarantee of it than under •a Roman Catholic the items on the left, the other for those on the right·—and despot (or rather under •the despotic rule of the church itself, to assign to each its own province, specific rights, duties, because with any other despot, even a Roman Catholic one, powers, and properties. But the extent of these provinces there will still be issues about the secular/ecclesiastical and the boundary dividing them haven’t yet been accurately borderline). [The parenthetical part of that sentence expands an fixed. [Mendelssohn write ‘boundaries’, but the singular seems better extremely compressed clause of Mendelssohn’s.] because he is evidently thinking in terms of only two ‘provinces’.] Some- times we see •the church moving the boundary-marker deep But as soon as freedom dares to move any of the pieces in into the territory of the state; sometimes we see •the state this systematic structure, ruin immediately threatens on all allowing itself encroachments that seem equally violent. . . . sides; and it’s no longer clear what is going to survive all this. Immeasurable evils have already arisen, and threaten to Hence the extraordinary confusion—the civil disturbances arise again, from the quarrel between these ‘moral entities’. as well as ecclesiastical ones—during the early years of the When they go to battle against each other, mankind is the Reformation, and the conspicuous embarrassment of the loser; when they are in agreement, the jewel in the crown of teachers and reformers themselves whenever they had to human happiness is lost; for when they agree on something face up to the How far? question in matters of legal rights it is usually on banishing from their realms a third moral and privileges. Not only was it hard in •practice to keep entity, freedom of conscience, which knows how to get some the multitude within proper bounds after its chains had benefit from their disunity. come off, but even in •theory the writings of those times are

1 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 1. Some history of our problem full of vague and shifting concepts whenever they address until men agreed to put an end to it by renouncing •right the question of fixing ecclesiastical power. The despotism and •might as far as public safety was concerned, placing of the Roman church was abolished—but what other form •both in the hands of an established authority. From then is to take its place? – Even now in our more enlightened on, whatever that authority ordered was right. times, the textbooks of ecclesiastical law can’t get rid of this Perhaps Hobbes had no taste for political freedom; or vagueness. The clerical side won’t or can’t give up all claims perhaps ·he valued it but· preferred to see it destroyed to a constitution, but what should it be? [This ‘refers, no doubt, rather than have it thus abused. But in order to keep his to Collegialism’, a doctrine which ‘defended the right of the church as own freedom of thought, of which he made more use than a corporation, to administer its affairs in complete independence from anyone else, he resorted to a subtle twist. According to his the state’ (A. Altmann, in the Brandeis U.P. edition of this work, pages system, all right is based on power, and all obligation on fear; 148, 147).] No-one knows! Here’s one who wants to settle God is infinitely more powerful than any civil authority, so doctrinal differences without recognising a supreme judge. God’s right is also infinitely superior to the right of any such Here’s another who goes on talking about an ‘independent authority; and the fear of God obliges us to perform duties church’, without knowing where it is to be found. Here’s yet that mustn’t yield to any fear of the civil authority. But this another who defends ‘power’ and ‘rights’ but can’t say who applies only to inward religion, which was all Hobbes cared should exercise them. about. External worship he put wholly under the command Thomas Hobbes lived at a time when fanaticism, linked of •the civil authority; any change in church procedures with a disorderly sense of freedom, lost all sense of limits without •its permission is not only high treason but also and was all set to—and eventually did—stamp on royal blasphemy. He deployed the subtlest distinctions in an authority and destroy the entire constitution of the realm. attempt to prevent the inevitable collisions between inward Fed up with civil strife, and naturally inclined towards a and external worship; and although there are still many quiet life of scholarly thought, he put the highest price on gaps ·in this theoretical structure·, making the weakness of tranquility and security—never mind how they were to be the reconciliation quite evident, one can’t help admiring the achieved—and he thought the only way to have them was ingenuity with which he sought to make his system coherent. through a unified and indestructible supreme power in the There is basically a lot of truth in all Hobbes’s assertions. state. So he thought that the public welfare would be best They do lead to absurd consequences, but those are due served if the supreme power of the civil authority were put solely to the extravagance of his formulations (Why the in command of everything, even our judgments of right and extravagance? Perhaps it was just because he loved paradox. wrong. To find an account of how this could happen more or perhaps he was trying to make his doctrines fit with the legitimately, he postulated that nature gives man a right to needs of his time.) Moreover, his contemporaries’ concepts anything it has made it possible for him to get. The state of of natural law were rather muddy; and Hobbes did the same nature is a state of universal uproar, a war of all against all, service in moral philosophy as Spinoza did in metaphysics: in which each person is entitled to do anything that he can his ingenious errors set other thinkers to work! The ideas do; might makes right! This miserable state of affairs lasted of right and duty, of power and obligation, have been better

2 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 1. Some history of our problem developed ·since then·; philosophers have learned to draw subjects’ welfare. For although that power isn’t answerable a more accurately placed line between •physical and •moral to any man, it does (according to Hobbes) have to answer to ability, between •might and •right. These distinctions have the Supreme Judge; although it isn’t constrained by a fear of worked their way so intimately into our ·everyday· language any human power, it is still bound by fear of the Omnipotent, that the refutation of Hobbes’s system seems, now, to be a who has been clear enough about what he wants in this matter of common sense—to be accomplished by language matter. Hobbes is very explicit about this, and is in fact less itself, so to speak. It’s like that with all moral truths: indulgent to the gods of the earth [meaning ‘the supreme powers As soon as they are brought to light, they become so in the various states’] than his system would lead one to expect. much a part of ordinary speech, and so connected But this same fear of the Omnipotent, which should hold with our everyday notions, that even people with kings and princes to certain duties towards their subjects, quite ordinary minds find them obvious—and now can create obligations for everyone in the state of nature. we wonder how anyone could have stumbled on such So we come around to it again: a solemn law of nature, a smooth road. which Hobbes doesn’t want to admit. – That’s how these But we’re overlooking the work that had to be done clear this days a student of natural law can win a victory over Thomas path through the wilderness. Hobbes—to whom, basically, he owes this victory! Hobbes himself must have been aware of some of the Locke, who lived during the same period of deep confu- inadmissible results that followed directly from his extrav- sion, tried to protect the freedom of conscience in a different agant propositions. If men aren’t bound by nature to any way. In his Letter on Toleration he works from the basic defi- duty, then they aren’t under a duty to keep their contracts. nition: A state is a society of men who unite for the purpose If the only binding obligation in the state of nature is the of collectively promoting their temporal [see Glossary] welfare. one based on fear and weakness, contracts will remain valid From this it naturally follows that the state shouldn’t concern only as long as they are supported by fear and weakness. So itself at all with the citizens’ beliefs regarding their eternal men’s contracts won’t have brought them an inch closer to [see Glossary] happiness, and should tolerate everyone who security; they’ll still be back in the primitive state of universal conducts himself well as a citizen—i.e. doesn’t interfere with warfare. But if contracts are to remain valid, men must by the temporal happiness of his fellow-citizens. The state nature—not through contracts and deals—lack the moral should be blind to differences of religion, because religion has ability to act against compacts that they have voluntarily no •necessary influence on temporal matters, and is linked made; that is, they mustn’t •be permitted to do so even when to them solely through measures that men have •chosen to they •can; they must lack the moral ability even if they have institute. the physical ability. So might and right are different things; Very well! If the dispute could have been settled by a and even in the state of nature they were—·or rather the verbal definition, I don’t know of a better one than Locke’s conceptions of them were·—different concepts. – Moreover, for that purpose; and if the agitated minds of his time could Hobbes lays down strict laws forbidding the highest power in have been talked out of their intolerance by means of it, the the state to command anything that would be contrary to its good Locke wouldn’t have needed to go into exile as often as

3 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 1. Some history of our problem he did! But ·that’s not what happened. Instead we hear the miss their mark as soon as the state completely abandons agitated minds asking·: the care for eternity. What prevents us from seeking to promote collectively On the other hand, it is , in the strictest sense, neither our •eternal welfare as well? Indeed, what reason in keeping with the truth nor advantageous to man’s welfare do we have to restrict the purpose of society solely to mark the temporal off so sharply from the eternal. The to the •temporal? If men can promote their eternal rock-bottom truth is that man will never partake of eternity; happiness by public measures, it’s their natural duty for him, eternalness is merely unending temporality. His to do so—their rational obligation to join forces and temporality never ends, so it is an essential and inseparable to enter into social relations for this purpose. part of his permanency [= ‘of his never going out of existence’]. To But if that is right, and the state as such is be concerned contrast his •temporal welfare with his •eternal happiness is solely with temporal matters, a question arises: To whom to create a conceptual confusion—and one that has practical are we to entrust the care for the eternal? – To the church? consequences. It shifts the borders of the realm within which Now we are once again, back at our starting point: man can act in accordance with his capacities, and it has him •state and church, straining his powers to get beyond the goal that Providence •concern for the temporal and concern for the eternal, has so wisely set for him. Let me quote from something I •civil and ecclesiastical authority. wrote in an earlier work [he gives the reference]: ‘On the dark path that man has to walk here, he is granted just as much The relative importances of •state and •church mirror the light as he needs for the next steps he has to take. More relative importances of the •temporal and the •eternal. So would only dazzle him, and light from the side would only the state is subordinate to religion, and must give way confuse him.’ Every man needs to be constantly reminded whenever they collide. ·If you go that far, then· resist if that •he won’t end when •this life does; that he has ahead you can Cardinal Bellarmine and his arguments for the of him an endless future for which his life here below is a frightful conclusion •that the person who heads the church preparation, just as throughout all creation every present is on behalf of the Eternal ought ·also· to have command a preparation for the future. This life, say the rabbis, is a over everything temporal, and therefore possesses, at least vestibule in which one must conduct oneself in the way one indirectly,1 sovereign authority over all goods and frames wants to appear in the inner chamber. But you mustn’t go of mind in the world; •that all secular realms are indirectly on opposing •this life to •the future, leading men to think under spiritual monarch’s command, and must take their orders from him if they have to alter their form of government, •that their true welfare in this life isn’t one and the replacing their kings by others. . . . And so on, according to same as their eternal happiness in the future; and the maxims of his order which Bellarmine propounds so •that it’s one thing to care for their temporal, and ably in his work De Romano pontiﬁce. All the objections that another to care for their eternal well-being, and they poured out against the cardinal’s ﬂawed arguments seem to can preserve one while neglecting the other. 1 Bellarmine was nearly declared a heretic by Pope Sixtus V for ascribing to him only indirect power over temporal matters of kings and princes!.

4 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. State and religion: general points

A weak-sighted man who has to walk a narrow path is accomplishes what duty demands, and the •frame of mind harmed by delusions of this kind: they shift his viewpoint secures that the action comes from the proper source, i.e. and his horizon, so that he risks becoming dizzy and stum- from pure motives. bling on a level road. Many a man doesn’t dare to enjoy the So human perfection involves both actions and thoughts benefits Providence has given him in the here and now for [see Glossary], and society should do its best to take care of fear of losing an equal portion in the after-life; many a man both through its collective efforts, i.e. it should direct its has become a bad citizen on earth in the hope that this will members’ actions towards the common good, and bring it make him a better citizen of heaven. about that they have frames of mind that will lead to such actions. The former is the government of societal man, the 2. State and religion: general points latter is his education. One is led to both by reasons: to actions by •reasons for doing, and to beliefs [see Glossary] by The following considerations are presented as my attempt •reasons for believing. So society should establish both of to clarify the concepts of state and religion—especially of these through public institutions, in such a way that they’ll their limits and their influence on •one another as well as on square with the common good. •happiness in civil life. As soon as man comes to realize that The reasons that lead men to rational actions and frames outside of society he can’t fulfill his duties towards of mind have to do partly with how men relate to one another • • himself and the Author of his existence any more and partly with how they relate to their Creator and Keeper. • than he can his duties towards his neighbour, The former are the province of the state, the latter that of and is led by this to realize also that religion. To the extent that men’s actions and thoughts can he can’t go on in this solitary condition without a be made to serve the public welfare through reasons arising feeling wretched, from their relations to each other, they—·those actions and he has to get out of that condition and enter into social thoughts·—are a matter for the civil constitution; but to relations with others who are situated as he is, so that he the extent that the relations between man and God can and they can •satisfy their needs through mutual aid and be seen as their source, they belong to the church, the •adopt common measures to promote their common good. synagogue, or the mosque. In a good many textbooks That includes their future as well as their present common of so-called ecclesiastical law there are solemn inquiries good—it involves the spiritual as well as the earthly. [In the relating to •Jews, •·outrightly defiant· heretics and •·merely original, ‘future’ and ‘present’ are reversed—an obvious slip.] The two muddled· wrong-believers, the question being. . . are inseparable. If we don’t fulfill our obligations we can’t expect to be happy here or there, on earth or in heaven. how Mendelssohn goes on: . . . ob auch sie eine Kirche haben Now, the true fulfillment of our duties has two elements: the können. Nach den unermeßlichen Vorrechten, die die so- •physical action and the •frame of mind [see Glossary] in which gennante Kirche sich anzumaßen plegt, ist die Frage so it is performed. [The original has Handlung and Gesinnung—with ungereimt nicht, als sie einem ungefangenen Leser scheinen a verbal overlap that can’t be reproduced in English.] The •action muß.

5 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. State and religion: general points literally translated: . . . whether they can also have a church. My point is just that if benevolence doesn’t flow from the Given the immeasurable privileges that the so-called church free impulse of the benevolent individual, it isn’t benevolence regularly grabs for itself, the question isn’t as absurd as it after all and has neither value and no merit. must seem to a reader who hasn’t been previously informed. Perhaps we can now give a satisfactory answer to the what he seems to have been getting at: . . . whether what they famous question: Which form of government is the best? This have can rightly be called a ‘church’. When you remember question has until now received contradictory answers, all the immeasurable privileges that anything called a ‘church’ of them plausible. Really the question is too vague ·to be grabs for itself, the question isn’t as absurd (trivial, merely decently answered·, almost as vague as a similar one in verbal) as it must seem to a reader who looks at it without medicine: Which food is the most wholesome? The answer knowing anything about its setting. differs depending on physiological condition, climate, age, sex, mode of life, and so on. It’s like that with regard to our But you won’t be surprised that to me the difference of politico-philosophical problem. What form of government is name doesn’t matter. ’Church’ is my name for any public best will be different for each population, no matter what its institution for the shaping men in their relations with God; level of culture is. Many despotically ruled nations would be and ‘state’ is my name for any public institution for the extremely miserable if they were left to govern themselves, shaping men in their relations with one another. By the as miserable as many free-spirited republics would be if ‘shaping’ of men I mean the effort to steer both •actions they were subjected to the rule of a monarch. Indeed, and •thoughts in such a way that they make for human many a nation will alter its form of government to match happiness—the effort to •govern men and to •educate them. changes that occur in its culture, way of life, and patterns of I salute any state that manages to govern the nation thinking; so that in the course of centuries it goes through by educating it, i.e. by infusing it with Sitten [see Glossary] the whole cycle of forms of government, in all their shades and frames of mind that will lead to actions favourable to and combinations, from anarchy to despotism; yet it will the public good—doing this by themselves, with no need for always have chosen the form of government that was best constant digs by the spur of the law. – To live in a society a for it under existing circumstances. man must renounce some of his rights for the sake of the But under all circumstances and conditions the infallible common good; or we might put it by saying that he must very measure of the quality of a form of government is the degree often sacrifice his own benefits to benevolence [see Glossary]. If to which it achieves its purposes by Sitten and ways of this sacrifice is strictly voluntary, and if on each occasion he thinking—i.e. the extent to which it governs by educating. In realizes that he has acted solely for the sake of benevolence, other words, in the extent to which the citizen is enabled to that will be excellent for him. Basically, benevolence makes take in—·to ‘get the picture’·— us happier than selfishness does; but we must have a sense •that it’s purely for the common good that he has to of our benevolence as an expression of ourselves and our renounce some of his rights; powers. I am not relying here on the view that some sophists •that it’s only for the sake of benevolence that he has have advanced, that self-love is the only human motivation. to sacrifice some of his own self-interest;

6 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. State and religion: general points

•that he therefore gains as much through a display of •that true knowledge of the Creator can’t leave any benevolence as he loses by his sacrifice; and indeed residue of hatred for men in the soul. •that by means of •that sacrifice itself he greatly adds Teaching this is religion’s job, and also its duty and vocation; to his own inner happiness, because •it increases preaching it is the job and duty and vocation of its ministers. the merit and the worth of the benevolent act and How could men ever have come to allow religion to teach and therefore also the true perfection of the benevolent its ministers to preach the exact opposite? individual. But it can become impossible to govern a nation through It would be unwise (for example) for a state to take on all the thoughts alone, because of duties of love for our fellow-man down to the distribution of •the nation’s character, alms, and to transform them into public institutions. A man •the level of culture it has reached, feels his own worth when he performs charitable acts, when •the increase in population that came with prosperity, he really takes in how he is alleviating the distress of his •the greater complexity of relations and connections, fellow-man by his gift; when he gives because he wants to. •excessive luxury; [see Glossary] But if he gives because he must, all he feels are his chains. and in that case the state will have to resort to public Hence, one of the state’s principal efforts must be to measures, coercive laws, punishments of crime and rewards govern men through Sitten and thoughts. Now, the only for merit. If a citizen isn’t willing to defend the fatherland way to improving people’s thoughts and thereby their Sitten from an inner sense of duty, let him be drawn by rewards is by •convincing them ·of the things you want them to or compelled by force. If men lose all sense of the intrinsic believe·. Laws don’t alter thoughts; arbitrary punishments value of justice, if they no longer realize that honesty in and rewards don’t produce any principles, don’t improve any trade and traffic is true happiness, let injustice and fraud Sitten. Fear and hope are not criteria of truth. Knowledge, be punished! It’s true that by these measures the state reasoning, and •conviction are the only things that can come only half-achieves the ultimate aim of ·coming together in a· up with principles which will find their way into Sitten with society. External motivations don’t make the man they affect the help of authority and example. And this is where religion happy. The man who avoids deception because he •loves should come to the aid of the state, and the church should honesty is happier than one who •is merely afraid of the become a pillar of civic happiness. It’s the church’s business punishments that the state has chosen to impose for fraud. to convince people, in a vividly emphatic way, of the truth of But it doesn’t matter to his fellow-citizens what motives ·certain· noble principles and thoughts; to show them cause his law-abiding conduct, i.e. why their rights and •that their duties towards men are also duties towards property are safeguarded. Whether the citizens happily fight God, out of love of their country, or unhappily fight for it because •that violating them is in itself the greatest misery, they’re afraid of being punished if they don’t, either way the •that serving the state is true service of God, honesty fatherland is defended. If the society’s inner happiness can’t and justice are God’s command and benevolence his entirely preserved, at least let outward peace and security holy will, and be obtained—through coercion if necessary.

7 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. State and religion: general points

So the state will—if it has to—settle for •mechanical So now we see an essential difference between state and deeds, •works without spirit, •conformity of action without religion. conformity in thought. Once the laws have been officially •The state commands and coerces; religion teaches enacted, even the man who doesn’t believe in laws must obey and persuades. them. The state can allow the individual citizen the right to •The state issues laws; religion issues commandments. •pass judgment on the laws, but not to the right to •act in •The state has at its disposal physical force, which it accordance with his judgment. The latter right is something uses; the power of religion is love and beneficence. he had to give up as a member of the society, because without •The state abandons the disobedient and expels him such a renunciation ·on the part of its members· civil society ·from the land of the living·; religion embraces him is an impossibility [ein Unding = ‘a non-thing’]. – Not so with and tries to teach or at least to comfort him in the last religion! It doesn’t recognise moments of his earthly life. . . . ·Civil society has rights; you might think that only a person • any act without conviction, can have rights, but· I am now looking at civil society as a •any work without spirit, moral person [see Glossary]. So civil society as a moral person • any conformity in behaviour without conformity in the •can have the right to coerce its members; and it actually mind. •does have this right, which it obtained through the social Religious actions without religious thoughts [see Glossary] are contract. Religious society lays no claim to the right of mere puppetry, not service of God. ·Genuinely God-serving· coercion, and can’t obtain it through any possible contract. religious actions must come from the spirit, and can’t be The state has perfect rights, the church only imperfect ones. purchased by reward or compelled by punishment. But In order to place this in a proper light, let me go up to the religion withdraws its support also from civil actions that level of first principles and examine more closely [this display are produced not by beliefs but by force. And as soon as the is Mendelssohn’s] state has to operate only through rewards and punishments, that’s the end of any help it can expect from religion, because the origin of •the rights of coercion and •the validity of with that mode of operation man’s duties towards God drop contracts among men. out of the picture, and man’s relations with his Creator are I’m risking making this too high-flown and theoretical for without effect. The only way religion can help the state is some readers; but you are free to skip anything that isn’t to by (1) teaching and (2) comforting—i.e. (1) using its divine your taste. The friends of natural law won’t object to seeing doctrines to get the citizens into a public-spirited frame of how I try to lay bare its first principles. ·The starting theme mind, and (2) uplifting with its otherworldly comforts the of church and state will be returned to in subsection 10 on poor wretch who has been condemned to death as a sacrifice page 16·. for the common good. [Mendelssohn writes Opfer für das gemeine Beste, which is the language of ritual sacrifice, e.g. slaughtering sheep so as to win the favour of Zeus.]

8 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 3. What rights are

3. What rights are •two kinds of rights: (a) If the relevant law applies to Richard just in himself, without bringing in facts about anyone else, The authority—the moral ability—to use something as a what he has is a perfect right. (b) If the law gives Richard means for promoting one’s happiness is called a right. This a right only on condition that certain things are the case ability is called ‘moral’ if it is consistent with the laws of about the knowledge and conscience of Duncan, the person wisdom and goodness. And the things that can be used in who has the corresponding duty, then what Richard has is this way are called goods. So man has a right to certain an imperfect right. In the case of (a) Duncan is perfectly goods, i.e. certain means of happiness, so long as this right bound to perform the duty corresponding to Richard’s s right; doesn’t contradict the laws of wisdom and goodness. [Don’t in the case of (b) he is bound only imperfectly. ·Richard’s think of ‘goods’ purely in terms of (say) ‘Leave the goods in the truck; I’ll right depends in part of Duncan’s state of mind; and so does unload them later’, but also in terms of (say) ‘For any man, sound health Duncan’s duty·. and a happy family are great goods’.] [The rest of this paragraph is displayed with asterisks for ease reference If the laws of wisdom and goodness say that x must be a little later.] done—or if not doing x would be contrary to the laws of ****** wisdom or goodness—then x is called morally necessary. There are perfect and imperfect duties as well as rights. The moral necessity (obligation) to act in a certain way is a duty. •The ﬁrst are called enforceable rights and enforceable The laws of wisdom and goodness can’t contradict each duties; the rights are ‘enforceable’ in precisely the sense other. Thus, if have a right to do something, no-one can have that the corresponding duties are enforceable; the failure to the right to block me from doing it; otherwise, a single action perform an enforceable duty is an offence, an injustice; ·it is would be morally possible and morally impossible at the outright wrong·. These rights and duties are external. same time. For every right, therefore, there’s a corresponding •The others—the imperfect ones—have different names. Im- duty. For the right to act there’s a duty to allow the action; perfect rights are called claims (petitions), and imperfect for the right to demand there’s a duty to obey, etc.2 duties are called duties of conscience. Petitions can’t be [In this next paragraph, the names ‘Richard’ and ‘Duncan’ are re- enforced; they may be denied; and if you deny one, thus not minders of ‘right’ and ‘duty’ respectively; they aren’t in the work as performing some duty of conscience, that ·is not outright Mendelssohn wrote it.] Wisdom combined with goodness is wrong, but merely· mean. These rights and duties are called justice. – When Richard has a right, this will be internal. because of some law of justice; and there are •two ways in The goods to which a man has an exclusive right are (1) his which that law may relate to the right, and correspondingly own capacities, (2) products of his efforts, i.e. anything that 2 You may want to object that in time of war a soldier has the right to kill the enemy though the enemy has no duty to put up with being killed. But the soldier has this right not •as a man but •as a member or employee of the state engaged in war. That state is or claims to be offended, and ·claims· that it can’t get satisfaction except by using force. So this is a ﬁght not between man and man but between state and state, and obviously only one of the two warring states has right on its side. The offender certainly has a duty to give satisfaction to the offended, and to put up with anything that the offended state needs to regain its injured rights.

9 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 5. Rights and duties in the state of nature he produces—or cultivates, tends, protects, improves—by everything the man possesses in the state of nature in the means of those capacities, and (3) goods of nature that he way of effort, capacity, and powers—everything he can call has made his by connecting them with the products of his his—is devoted partly to his own use (his own benefit), partly efforts in such a way that they can’t be separated without to benevolence. being destroyed. These ·three classes of· goods constitute But a man’s capacity is limited and therefore exhaustible, his natural property. In the state of nature, before any so it may sometimes happen that the same capacity or contract had been enacted among men, there was common goods can’t serve both me and my neighbour. Also, I can’t ownership of goods produced by nature; but only of ones employ the same capacity or goods for the benefit of all my produced solely by nature without any input from man’s fellow-men, or at all times, or under all circumstances. So efforts and care; so the common ownership did not extend my duty to make the best possible use of my powers requires to the three classes of natural property that I have listed. – me to choose the details of my benevolence: how much of my Not all ·individual· ownership is conventional. possessions should I devote to it? for which beneficiaries? when? under what circumstances? 4. Benevolence and beneficence It’s I who have to make these decisions, and also decisions about how to handle cases where there is a conflict ·of moral A man can’t be happy without •receiving beneficence, but demands·. – It can’t be left to anyone else, because no-one he also can’t be happy without •giving beneficence. He knows ·as I do· all the facts on the basis of which the conflict can’t become—·in the sense that he can’t become complete·— has to be resolved. And in any case, if •someone other than except through •mutual assistance, •exchanges of service me could decide then •anyone other than me could do so; and reciprocal service, •active and passive connection with each would probably decide in a way that favoured him, and his fellow-man. we would have an inextricable tangle. So if a man owns goods (i.e. has control of means to happiness) that he can spare, i.e. that aren’t essential to 5. Rights and duties in the state of nature his existence or to improving his condition, he has a duty to employ part of them in benevolence [see Glossary], for the In the state of nature, therefore, it is for me and me alone to benefit of his fellow-man; because the improvement of one’s decide own condition is inseparable from benevolence. •whether, But for similar reasons, he has a right to get benevolence •to what extent, from his fellow-man. He can expect and claim the help •when, of others through goods that they can spare and that will •for whose benefit, and move him along to his perfection [= ‘completeness’]. In all this, •under what conditions don’t forget what we mean by ‘goods’, namely all of man’s I am obliged to exercise beneficence; and in the state of inner and external capacities , insofar as they can become nature there’s no way to force me to act beneficently ·at all, means to someone’s happiness—his or someone else’s. Thus, let alone doing so in one way rather than another·. [The rest of

10 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 6. Parents and children

this paragraph has to be understood in terms of the passage displayed employ for the good of others and who the beneficiaries beneath asterisks on page9. ] My duty to be beneficent is only a should be. It’s solely up to me to decide how to resolve any duty of conscience, concerning which I don’t have to render conflicts ·between moral pulls· that arise. an account to any external authority; just as my right to the beneficence of others is only a right to petition, which 6. Parents and children may be refused. – In the state of nature, all of men’s positive duties towards each other are only imperfect duties (·the The natural relationship between parents and children isn’t ones I have called ‘duties of conscience’·), that one can’t be in conflict with this universal law of nature. It isn’t hard to forced to perform; just as their positive rights against one get the idea that in a state of nature the only people who are another are only imperfect rights (·the kind I have called independent are those who can be relied on to make rational ‘petitions’·), and force can’t be used to get them satisfied. – decisions when conflicts arise. Until they reach the age at The only perfect duties and rights in the state of nature are which they can be relied on to use their reason, therefore, ·negative ones, i.e.· ones relating to omissions. I am perfectly children have no claim to independence, and must let others obliged not to harm anyone, and I have a perfect right to decide how and for what purposes they are to employ their prevent anyone from harming me. We all know, of course, powers and capacities. The parents have a duty •to train that to ‘harm’ someone means to act against his perfect right. their children, step by step, in the art of making rational You might think that the duty to provide compensation decisions in cases of conflict, and as their reason grows •to for harm is a positive duty that a man has even in the state allow them gradually to make free and independent use of of nature. If I have harmed my neighbour, I am externally their powers. obliged—without any contract, and solely by the laws of It’s true that even in the state of nature parents are natural justice—compensate him for the harm inflicted, and externally obliged to do certain things for their children; and he can compel me by force to do so. you might see this as a positive duty that can be enforced It’s true that providing compensation is a •positive act, under the eternal laws of wisdom and goodness, without any but the obligation to provide it basically comes from the contract coming into it. But I think not. I believe that in the duty of •omission: Do not offend! For the harm that I have state of nature the right to compel the education of children inflicted upon my neighbour must be regarded as an ongoing belongs solely to the parents themselves, vis-à-vis each other; offence for as long as its effects are not undone. Strictly ·that is, each parent has a right to compel the other parent speaking, therefore, as long as I don’t provide compensation to help in getting the children educated·. No third party has I am continuing to offend, and therefore infringing a negative any right to intervene to look after the children’s interests by duty—·namely, the one that says do not offend·. So the duty forcing their parents to educate them. . . . The parents’ right to provide compensation is not an exception to the rule that to compel each other to educate the children follows from in the state of nature a man is independent, i.e. under no the agreement that they are presumed to have made, if not positive obligation to anyone. No-one has an enforceable in words then through their behaviour. right to prescribe to me how much of my powers I should

11 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 7. Marriage

Whoever helps to bring into existence a being capable entitled The Search for Light and Right. . . .it is reported that of happiness is obliged by the laws of nature to promote just such a case is now pending in Vienna, where the book its happiness as long as it can’t yet provide for its own is said to have been written. A Jew who converted to the advancement. This is the natural duty of education. It is Christian religion expressed his desire to retain his wife, indeed only a duty of conscience; but by their behaviour who has remained Jewish, and legal proceedings have been the parents have ·tacitly· agreed to help each other in this, initiated. The author I have mentioned decides the case on i.e. to discharge together their duty of conscience. In short, the basis of the system of freedom: by their cohabitation the parents have entered into a state ‘It is right to hold that a difference of religion can’t be of matrimony. They have made a tacit contract regarding recognized as a valid cause for divorce. According to the happiness-destined being whom they are bringing into the principles of the wise Joseph, difference of opinion the world, namely to make the child capable of happiness, in church-related matters can’t stand in the way of i.e. to educate him. [The relevant German verb, which Mendelssohn social ties.’ [That is a reference to Joseph II, Emperor of the italicises, could be translated ‘to bring him up’.] Holy Roman Empire at that time; he was wise in many ways.] Not so fast! I hope an emperor who is as just as he is wise 7. Marriage will also listen to the counterarguments, and not permit the system of freedom to be misused to inﬂict oppression All the duties and rights of the married state ﬂow quite and violence. – If marriage is merely a civil contract (and it naturally from this principle. There’s no need for the two can’t be anything else between a Jew and a Jewess, even principles that the law-professors invoke, one for all the on Catholic principles), the wording and the conditions of duties of •marriage and another for duties of the •household. the contract must be interpreted and explained on the basis The duty to educate follows from the agreement to beget of the intentions •of the contracting parties, not those •of children; and the obligation to set up a shared household a legislator or judge. If. . . .it is certain that the contracting follows from the shared duty of education. So marriage is parties must have understood certain words in this way and basically nothing but an agreement between two persons of no other, and that that’s how they would have explained them different sexes to bring children into the world; the entire had they been asked, then this morally certain explanation system of their mutual duties and rights comes from this. counts as a tacit and implied condition of the contract, and ·STARTOFATHREE-COLUMNFOOTNOTE· must be as valid in law as if it had been explicitly agreed When individuals of different religions enter into a state upon. Now since both partners still professed the Jewish of matrimony, their marriage contract will include an agree- religion, at least outwardly, when they entered into the ment about the principles on which they will conduct their contract, it’s obvious that they intended to manage their household and educate their children. But what if the household according to Jewish rules of life and to bring up husband or wife changes his or her principles after marriage their children according to Jewish principles. . . . Look at it and converts to another religion? Does this give the other from the point of view of the partner who took her religion party the right to press for a divorce? In a small treatise seriously:. . . . If at the time of the contract it was known

12 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 8. Transfer of goods that she fully expected the marriage and the household to the principles that they at first shared. . . . An emperor as run along Jewish lines, and if the difference between Jew just and wise as Joseph will surely not permit such violent and Christian was important to her, the contract should be misuse of the power of the church in his states. interpreted according to her notions and beliefs. Even if the ·ENDOFTHELONGFOOTNOTE· entire state had different views on this matter, that wouldn’t I’ll show later on that men by agreement leave the state of affect the meaning of the contract. The husband has changed nature and enter into the state of society. Consequently, his principles and adopted another religion. If the wife is parents’ duty to educate their children, although it can now forced to enter into a household that is contrary to her in some respects be called an enforceable duty, isn’t an conscience and to bring up her children on principles that exception to the previously mentioned law of nature: that aren’t hers—compelled to accept conditions of a marriage man in the state of nature is independent, and that he alone contract to which she never agreed—that would obviously be has the right to settle cases of conflict between what’s good unjust; it would be obviously be a case of pleading freedom for him and what would be good for others. of conscience in defence of the most preposterous coercion of conscience. The husband by changing his principles 8. Transfer of goods brought it about that the conditions of the contract can’t now be fulfilled; he may not have meant to, but he did. This right constitutes man’s natural freedom, which makes Must the wife allow her conscience to be coerced so that her up a good part of his happiness. So his independence is husband’s can be free? When did she agree—when could included among the personal goods that he is entitled to use she have agreed—to that? Shouldn’t her conscience also as a means towards his own happiness. Whoever disturbs be free, and shouldn’t the party who •caused the change him in the use of this right commits an offence against also •answer for its consequences, compensate the other him—commits an external act of injustice. Man in the state party, and reinstate her as far as possible in her former of nature is the master of all that is his— status? Nothing could be simpler, it seems to me—the thing •the free use of his powers and capacities, speaks for itself. No-one can to be compelled to accept the •the free use of whatever he has produced by exercising conditions of a contract to which he couldn’t have agreed his powers (i.e. the fruits of his industry), and without violating his own principles. •whatever he has inseparably connected with the fruits As regards the education of their children, the two parties of his industry. have an equal right. In a disputed case like this, the It’s purely up to him to decide how much, when, and for children should be educated in secular schools until they the benefit of which of his fellow-men he will dispense with reach the age of reason and can make religious choices for some of the goods he can spare. His fellow-men have only an themselves—if we had any secular schools! But we don’t; imperfect right to his surplus goods, a right to petition; and all our schools are connected with one or another positive he, the absolute master, has a duty of conscience to devote religion; so it’s obvious that the education of the children a part of his goods to benevolence. Indeed he is even obliged should be decided by the party who has remained true to sometimes to sacrifice his own convenience to benevolence,

13 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 8. Transfer of goods because the practice of benevolence makes a man happier sufficiently intelligible signs ·of one’s intention·, to pass over than selfishness does. But this sacrifice must proceed from to others one’s right to goods that are immovable, including his own will and his own free impulse. All this seems to be ones that aren’t physical. settled beyond any doubt. But I’ll take it a step further. This is how property can pass from person to person. Once this independent man has passed a judgment, that Whatever I have made my own through my own efforts judgment must be valid. If in the state of nature I have becomes through my gift the property of someone else; and I decided to whom, when, and how much I want to give up can’t take it back from him without committing an injustice. of what belongs to me; if I have sufficiently declared this Now we need to take only one more step, and the validity free decision of mine, and my neighbour for whose benefit of contracts will be placed on a sure footing. The right to this declaration was made has received the property; the resolve conflicts ·between moral pulls· is, we have seen, a property stops being •mine and becomes •his. If that isn’t non-physical good of the independent man—a ‘good’ to the so, my declaration is ineffective—nothing has happened extent that it can become a means to happiness. In the state in consequence of my supposedly benevolent act. So my of nature every man has a perfect right, and his neighbour neighbour’s previously imperfect right becomes through this has an imperfect right, to the unhindered use of this means transaction a perfect right, just as my formerly perfect right towards happiness. But in many cases, at least, having has been transformed into an imperfect right—·meaning that this right isn’t absolutely necessary for survival; so it is a I have a right to ask for it back·. If my decision didn’t have dispensable good, which (as we have seen) can be passed that consequence it would be null and void. . . . over to someone else through a sufficient declaration of will. This holds true of material, movable goods that can be An act by which this is done is called a promise, and if. . . .the passed from hand to hand, as well as of immovable or even other party sufficiently indicates his consent to this transfer spiritual goods, the right to which can be given and received of rights, a contract comes into being. Thus, a contract ·of merely by a sufficient declaration of will. Actually, everything the kind I am concerned with here· is simply one person’s comes down to this declaration of will, and even the transfer •giving over and another’s •receiving the right to decide cases of movable goods is valid only if taken to be a sign of a of conflict involving certain goods that the maker of the sufficient declaration of will. The mere transfer doesn’t in promise can spare. itself either give or take away any right if this intent isn’t Such a contract must be kept, as we have seen. The right connected with it. If I put something in my neighbour’s to decide, which was a part of my goods, i.e. was mine, has hand, that doesn’t constitute my handing it over to him; if I become through this transfer a good of my neighbour’s, i.e. take into my hand something belonging to him, that doesn’t has become his; and I can’t take it back from him again mean that I have rightfully taken it over unless I indicate without committing an offence. Before the transfer, he or that that’s why I did this. The transfer itself may be a valid anyone else could petition for the use of ·this aspect of· my sign ·of the intention of both parties·; and in cases where independence, insofar as it isn’t needed for my survival; but the actual delivery of goods doesn’t occur, other significant after the transfer the recipient has a perfect right to the good signs may be substituted for it. So it is possible, by means of in question—a right that he is entitled to back up by force.

14 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 9. An analysis of promising

[This paragraph was a footnote.] I was led to this very plausible (iii) Everyone else has an imperfect right to this property, analysis of ideas by my very worthy friend Ernst Ferdinand but we’ll take the special case of Sempronius: he can petition Klein, the philosophical jurist, with whom I have had the Caius to use this good for his (Sempronius’s) benefit. The pleasure of discussing this matter. This theory of contracts right to decide ·whether to do this· belongs to Caius—it’s strikes me as simple and fruitful. Ferguson in his Moral Phi- his—and mustn’t be taken away from him by force. losophy, and the excellent translator of that work, base the (iv) Caius now makes use of his perfect right by deciding necessity of keeping promises on •the expectation aroused in favour of Sempronius ·as his chosen beneficiary·, and in the person to whom the promise is made, and on •the makes this decision known by sufficient signs; that is, Caius immorality of deception. But all you can get from this, it promises. seems, is a duty of conscience, ·not an enforceable duty·. (v) Sempronius accepts, also indicating his consent in a Some part of my goods that I was formerly conscience-bound significant manner. to give up for the benefit of my fellow-men in general I am now conscience-bound to grant to this individual in particular Thus, Caius’s declaration takes effect and comes into force; because of the expectations I have aroused in him. But what i.e. the good that was a property of Caius’s, was his, has has transformed this •duty of conscience into an •enforceable become a good of Sempronius’s. Caius’s perfect right has duty? To explain this, it seems to me, you have to bring in turned into an imperfect right, just as Sempronius’s imper- the principles relating to •gifts in general and to •the rights fect right has been transformed into a perfect, enforceable of deciding conflicts in particular. one. Caius must keep his legally binding promise; if he refuses, Sempronius can use force to compel him to do so. 9. An analysis of promising ****** Before leaving my speculative considerations and returning to my former track, I must apply the principles outlined It is by agreements of this kind that man leaves the above in laying down the conditions under which a contract state of nature and enters into the state of social relations; is valid and must be kept. and his own nature drives him to enter into many kinds ****** of associations in order to transform his fluctuating rights and duties into something definite. Only the savage, like (i) Caius possesses a good (some means to happiness: the an animal, clings to the enjoyment of the •present moment. use of his natural abilities, or the right to the fruits of his A civilized man lives also for the •future, and wants to be efforts and to the goods of nature connected with them, or able to count on something certain also in the next moment. whatever else has become his by right, whether it be physical We have seen that even the urge to procreate, when it’s not or non-physical—such as privileges, liberties and the like). merely animal instinct, compels man to enter into a social (ii) This good is not absolutely essential for his survival; so it contract, to which we find something analogous even among can be employed for the sake of benevolence, i.e. for the use many animals. of others.

15 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 10. Nonsense about duties towards God

10. Nonsense about duties towards God about how much of his rights each member of the society is to use for the benefit of society, this being enforced by laws. The Let us now begin to apply this theory of rights, duties, and state or its representative is viewed as a moral person who contracts to the difference between state and church, the has the power to manage these rights. So the state has rights topic I started with. State and church are both concerned and prerogatives with regard to men’s goods and actions. It with •actions as well as •thoughts— can give and take, prescribe and prohibit, according to law; •the state with actions and thoughts concerning rela- and because it is also concerned with actions, it may punish tions between ·man and man and between· man and and reward. The duty towards my neighbour is externally nature, satisfied if I give him his due, irrespective of whether my •the church with actions and thoughts concerning action be enforced or voluntary. If the state can’t achieve its relations between man and God. ends by means of interior motives,. . . .it at least operates by [•The addition of ‘and between man and man’ is based on the compa- external ones and helps my neighbour to get what is his. rable passage near the start of section 15 on page 23; it is clearly an Not so the church! Its concern is with relationship improvement. •In the second item, ‘between man and God’ replaces between God and man. God is not a being who Mendelssohn’s ‘between nature and God’; this is obviously a slip, which •needs our benevolence, doesn’t occur in the comparable later passage.] Men need each other; •requires our assistance, they hope for, promise, expect from, and render to each other •claims any of our rights for his own use, or services and return services. The mixture of •has rights that could clash or be confused with ours. •abundance and want, These erroneous notions ·about God’s needs and rights· •power and need, must have come from a division—one that has many things •selfishness and benevolence wrong with it—between •duties towards God and •duties given them by nature drives them to enter into societal towards man. They have been seen as parallel: relations so as to have a wider field of action for their —towards man— capacities and needs. Every individual is obliged to use a —towards God— part of his capacities and of the rights acquired through them and this thought has been taken too far. From a sense for the benefit of the society he belongs to. But which part? of duty towards our neighbour we sacrifice and hand over when? and for what purpose? – On the face of it, all this something of our own, so—·the thought goes·—we should ought to be answered solely by the person whose beneficence do likewise from a sense of duty towards God. Men require is in question. But it may be thought proper to renounce service; so does God. The duty towards myself may come into this right of independence by means of a social contract and conflict with the duty towards my neighbour; likewise, the to transform these imperfect duties into perfect ones by the duty towards myself may clash with the duty towards God. – enactment of laws drawn up and imposed by people ·as No-one will explicitly agree with these absurd propositions distinct from natural laws that are somehow inherent in the if they’re put to him in plain language, yet everyone has nature of things·. The proposal here is that men will agree soaked them up, as it were, and infected his blood with

16 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 11. Church and state: actions them. This is the source of all the unjust presumptions demand any other duties; it only gives those same duties that the so-called ‘ministers of religion’ have always allowed and obligations–·the ones taught by reason·—a more exalted themselves to make in the name of the church. sanction. God doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t want any •All the violence and persecution that they have service from us,3 any sacrifice of our rights for his benefit, perpetrated, any renunciation of our independence for his advantage. His •all the discord and strife, mutiny and sedition, that rights can never come into conflict or confusion with ours. they have plotted, and He wants only what is best for us, what is best for every •all the evils that have been perpetrated down the single individual; and this must be self-consistent, and can’t centuries under the cloak of religion by its fiercest contradict itself. enemies, hypocrisy and hatred of mankind, All these commonplaces are so trite that sound common are purely and simply the fruits of this pathetic sophistry of sense wonders how people could ever have thought differ- an illusory conflict between God and man, the Deity’s rights ently. And yet from time immemorial men have acted in and man’s. opposition to these self-evident principles, and will probably go on doing so for centuries to come. The immediate conclusion to be drawn from all this 11. Church and state: actions is—obviously, it seems to me—that Duties towards God are not one special division of human •the church has no right to goods and property, no duties. Rather, all of men’s duties are obligations towards claim to contributions and renunciations; God. Some of them concern ourselves, others our fellow-men. •its prerogatives can’t ever get tangled up with ours; We ought from love of God to love ourselves in a rational and hence manner, to love ·all·his creatures; just as from rational love •there can’t ever be a conflict ·of duty· between the of ourselves we are bound to love our fellow-men. church and its citizens. The system of our duties rests on a twofold principle: the From this it further follows that there can’t be any contract relation between man and nature, and the relation between between the church and the citizens, for all contracts pre- creature and Creator. The former is moral philosophy, suppose cases of conflict that are to be decided. Where no the latter religion; and for anyone who is convinced of the imperfect rights exist, no conflicts of claims arise; and where truth that the relations obtaining in nature are nothing but there’s no need for a decision between one set of claims and expressions of the divine will those two principles coalesce, another, a contract would be an absurdity. and the moral teachings of reason are sacred, like religion. It follows that no human contract can give the church And religion, i.e. the relation between God and man, doesn’t a right to goods and property, because by its very nature 3 The words ‘service’, ‘honour’, etc. have an entirely different meaning when used in reference to God from what they have when used in reference to man. Divine service is not a service that I render to God, the honour of God is not an honour which I do God. In order to keep the words, writers changed their meaning. But the common man still clings to the meaning that he is used to, while also sticking with his usual way of speaking; and this has given rise to much confusion in religious matters.

17 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 12. Church and state: thoughts the church can’t •make a claim on any of these or •have power over them· because it is so contrary to the nature of an imperfect right to them. So it can never acquire an their calling. The most they can be granted is compensation enforceable right, and its members can never have an en- for their loss of time; and calculating that and paying it is forceable duty towards it. The church’s only rights are to the business of the state, not the church. What concern scold, to instruct, to fortify, and to comfort; and the duties does the church have with things that are for sale, fixed of the citizens towards the church are an attentive ear and by contract and paid for? Time constitutes a part of our a willing heart. So the church has no right to reward or property, and the man who uses it for the common good may punish actions. •Civil actions are the concern of the state; hope for compensation from the public purse. The church specifically •religious actions, by their very nature, can’t doesn’t remunerate; religion doesn’t buy anything, doesn’t be produced by force or bribery. They flow from the free pay anything, and allots no wages. impulse of the soul—or if they don’t they are an empty show and contrary to the true spirit of religion. 12. Church and state: thoughts But if the church has no property, who will to pay the teachers of religion? Who is to remunerate those who preach These are, in my opinion, the boundaries between state and the fear of God? These notions— church in relation to their influence upon men’s •actions. •religion and pay, With regard to •thoughts, state and church come a bit closer •teaching virtue and salary, to each other, because here the state doesn’t have any •preaching the fear of God and remuneration effective means that the church doesn’t have too. Both —seem to shun one another! What influence can the teacher must teach, instruct, encourage, motivate. But neither of wisdom and virtue hope to have when he teaches for pay may reward or punish ·thoughts·, compel or bribe; for the and is for sale to the highest bidder? What impression can state can’t have acquired through any contract the slightest the preacher of the fear of God expect to make when he enforceable right over our thoughts, any more than the seeks remuneration? – ‘Behold, I have taught you laws and church can. Quite generally, men’s thoughts aren’t touched ordinances, as the Eternal, my God taught me’ (Deuteronomy by benevolence or by coercion. I can’t renounce any of my 4:5 ). The rabbis interpret ‘as my God taught me’ as meaning: thoughts [here = ‘beliefs’] out of love for my neighbour; nor ‘Just as He taught me without ·exacting· payment, so do I can I out of benevolence pass over to him any part of my teach you ·free·, and so should you teach those in your own power of judgment. . . . The right to our own thoughts [= care’. Payment is so contrary to the nature of this exalted beliefs] is inalienable, and can’t pass from person to person. . . . occupation, so out of tune with the way of life it demands, So the tiniest privilege that you publicly grant to those who that the slightest interest in income seem to degrade the share your religion and beliefs is to be called an indirect profession. The desire for wealth, freely condoned in any bribe, and the smallest liberty you withhold from dissidents •other profession, strikes us as avarice and greed in •this counts as an indirect punishment. Basically they have the one. Or in the men who dedicate themselves to this noble same effect as a direct reward for agreement, and a direct work it may actually become avarice and greed, ·getting this punishment for opposition. Some text books of ecclesiastical

18 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 13. Church government. Oaths law go on and on about how •reward differs from •privilege, 13. Church government. Oaths and •punishment differs from •restriction—this hocus-pocus is pathetic! The linguist may have some interest in these [The bold type in this next paragraph is not Mendelssohn’s. It is used distinctions; but to the poor wretch who must do without his here just because what he is saying is so striking and radical.] Then human rights because he what form of government is advisable for the church? – •can’t say ‘I believe’ when he doesn’t believe, or None! – If disputes arise over religious matters, who is to •refuses to be a Moslem with his lips and a Christian settle them? – He to whom God has given the ability to at heart, convince others. For what can be the use of it will be a poor consolation ·to be told that he is only being •a government, where there’s nothing to govern? restricted, not punished·. And what are the limits of privilege •authorities, where no-one is to be a subject? and of restriction? It has taken only a moderate gift for •a judiciary, where there are no rights and claims to logic-chopping for these concepts to be broadened, and then be adjudicated? broadened again, until privilege becomes civic happiness Neither state nor church is authorized to judge in religious and restriction becomes oppression, exile, and misery. . . . matters, because the members of society can’t have granted Fear and hope act on the drives of men’s desires; rational them that right by any contract whatsoever. The state, to arguments act on their cognitive faculty. When you use be sure, is to ensure from a distance that no doctrines are fear and hope to induce men to accept or reject certain propagated that are inconsistent with the public welfare— propositions, you’ve picked up the wrong tools for the job. doctrines which, like atheism and Epicureanism, undermine Indeed, even if that isn’t at all what you are aiming at, your the foundation on which the happiness of social life is based. better purpose—·whatever it is·—will still be impeded if you Let Plutarch and Bayle go on for ever asking whether a state don’t work to keep fear and hope out of view as much as you mightn’t be better off with •atheism than with •superstition. can. If you believe this: Let them go on for ever comparing the afﬂictions that these Testing for truth can continue, and freedom of inquiry two sources of misery have brought (and threaten to go on won’t be harmed, if what is waiting for the inquirer is bringing) down on the human race. Basically this amounts •status and dignity if he reaches one conclusion and to inquiring whether a slow fever is more fatal than a sudden •contempt and poverty if he reaches the other, one! No-one would wish either upon his friends. So every then either you are bribing and deceiving your own heart civil society would do well to let neither fanaticism nor or it has deceived you. Notions of good and evil are instru- atheism take root and spread. The body politic becomes ments for ·directing· the will, those of truth and untruth sick and miserable, whether it is worn down by cancer or for ·directing· the intellect. If you want to act on someone’s consumed by fever. intellect, put down the former tools (·the notions of good But the state should oversee this only from a distance, and evil·); otherwise you risk thwarting your own intention— and it should use wise moderation in favouring any doctrines, smoothing over where you should cut right through, and even ones on which its true happiness is based. It should not gluing back in place something that should be ripped out. interfere directly in any dispute, trying to use its authority

19 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 13. Church government. Oaths to settle it; for if it directly forbids inquiry or allows disputes •my relinquishing to my neighbour any of my dispens- to be decided by anything other than by rational arguments, able goods, it will obviously be defeating its own purpose. Nor need •any object of benevolence, or. the state concern itself ·to know· all the principles that a •any conflicts ·of moral pulls·. given faith—whether dominant or merely tolerated—accepts And how can the state claim for itself an authority that can’t or rejects. All that matters are the fundamental principles be conceded by any contract, can’t pass from one person to on which all religions agree, and without which happiness another by any declaration of intent? But let’s press this is a dream and virtue ceases to be virtue. Without •God, further by asking: Is there a real concept of affirmation under •providence, and •a future life, love of our fellow-man is oath? Are men’s opinions, their stands relating to rational merely a congenital weakness, and benevolence is little more propositions, a kind of thing on which they can be sworn? than a fancy form of showing off into which we try to lure Oaths don’t give rise to any new duties. Solemnly calling one another so that the simpleton will toil while the clever on God to be a witness of the truth ·of what one is saying· man enjoys laughing at him. doesn’t give or take away any right that didn’t already exist You hardly need me to go into the further question of without it, and it doesn’t lay on the man who does it any whether it is permissible to have teachers and priests affirm obligation that he didn’t have anyway. An oath merely serves certain doctrines of the faith on oath. What doctrines should to awaken the man’s conscience if it has fallen asleep, and be affirmed in this way? The ·three· fundamental articles to draw his attention to what the God’s will has already of all religions, mentioned above, can’t be confirmed by any demanded of him. So oaths are really not designed for the oath. You must take the swearer’s word for it that he accepts conscientious man, who doesn’t need them, or for the con- them; if he doesn’t, his oath is an empty sound, words that firmed good-for-nothing, who won’t be affected by them. . . . he tosses into the air at no greater cost to himself than is Oaths are therefore only for the ordinary, middling sort of required by a simple assurance. That is because all trust in man, which basically means that they are for all of us! They oaths. . . .rests solely on those ·three· fundamental doctrines are for men who of morality. Well, then, might I be required to affirm under •are weak, indecisive, and vacillating, oath some more particular articles of one or another religion, •have principles but don’t always follow them. ones that aren’t necessary for virtue and prosperity to endure •are lazy and slack regarding the good they know and among men? Even if the persons who represent the state understand, believe that these ·doctrinal items· are utterly necessary for •give in to their moods in order to indulge a weakness, my eternal salvation, I still want to ask: what right does the •procrastinate, extenuate, look for excuses and usually state have to pry into men’s souls and force them to make think they have found them. avowals that won’t bring any comfort or profit to society? They want to remain true to their intent, but lack the This ·right· couldn’t have been conceded to it ·by a contract· firmness to do so. These are the people whose will must because the conditions for a contract that I have laid out are be steeled and whose conscience must be aroused. Here’s a absent here. In this context, no question arises about case:

20 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 14. Beliefs as requirements for ofﬁce

A man testifying in court is suppressing information. inexpressible torment. It’s about property of someone else’s that he has had Most of the perceptions of the internal sense are in them- in his possession; he has now used it up, or has let selves so hard to get a grip on that the mind can’t securely it slip out of his hands; but he doesn’t want to deal retain them and express them on demand. They sometimes with the situation by doing anything absolutely wrong. slip away just when the mind thinks it has taken hold of All he wants to do through his tactic ·of repeatedly them. I feel sure of something right now, but a moment later stalling the courts· is to buy time, ·hoping that the some slight doubt as to its certainty sneaks into a corner sheer passage of time may help·. Throughout all this of my soul and lurks there, without my realising it. Many the good inclination that is fighting within him to get things that I would go to the stake for today may strike me him to do the right thing is put off from day to day as problematic tomorrow. If in addition ·to this intrinsic until finally it gets tired and succumbs! uncertainty· I must also put these internal perceptions into So he needs help: •first, the legal proceeding must be words and signs, or swear to words and signs that others lay protected from tactical delays and endless excuses by being before me, the uncertainty will be still greater. My neighbour made final and decisive now; and then •secondly, he must and I can’t possibly connect the same words with the same be made to swear under a solemn oath, which will with great internal sensations, for we can’t except in words set his force and emphasis remind him of God, the all-righteous sensations and mine side by side, to compare and correct avenger and punisher. them. . . . How much confusion and unclarity are bound to That’s what oaths are for. And something that follows remain in the meanings of words, and how different must be from this—follows obviously, it seems to me—is that men the ideas differ that different men at different times connect can be made to take oaths only about •things that affect their with the same external signs and words! external senses, •things they can maintain the truth of with the conviction that the evidentness of the external senses 14. Beliefs as requirements for office carries, •things about which they can say: ‘This I something that I heard, saw, said, received, gave’, or ‘. . . that I did Whoever you are, dear reader, don’t accuse me of scepticism not hear’ etc. But we’re putting their conscience to a cruel or of trying through evil tricks to turn you into a sceptic! I torture when we ask them about things that are solely a may be one of •the very furthest removed from that disease matter of the internal sense: of the soul, of •those who most ardently wish they could ‘Do you believe? Are you convinced? Persuaded? Do cure all their fellow-men of it. But precisely because I have you think so? If there’s still some doubt in any corner so often •performed this cure on myself, and •tried it on of your mind or heart, tell us about it or God will others, I have become aware of how hard it is, and far avenge the abuse of his name.’ one is from being sure of success. With my best friend, For Heaven’s sake, spare the tender and honest innocent! whose thinking I believed to be utterly in tune with mine, If all that he had to testify to was a simple proposition of I often failed to reach agreement about certain truths of geometry, he would under this bullying hesitate and suffer philosophy and religion. It sometimes turned out, after a long

21 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 14. Beliefs as requirements for office and disputatious to-and-fro, that we had each connected of all crimes; you charge him with lying under oath, and you different ideas with the same words. Pretty often we thought let happen what must happen in the case of such an outrage. alike but expressed ourselves differently; but equally often we Now, to put it mildly, isn’t there an equal measure of guilt thought we were in agreement, ·because of some agreement on both sides? in words·, when we were still very far apart in our thoughts. ‘Indeed,’ say the most fair-minded among you, ‘we don’t Yet we were practised, experienced thinkers, accustomed to make anyone swear to his faith. We allow the conscience dealing with abstract ideas, and it seemed to us both that its freedom. It’s only when we appoint a fellow-citizen to we were earnestly seeking the truth for its own sake rather a certain ·governmental or administrative· office that is than for the sake of being right about something. Despite entrusted to him on the condition of conformity ·of belief· which our ideas had to rub against each other for a long time that we make him swear that he accepts this condition. This before they could be made to fit themselves to one another, is a contract that we have with him. If he should later have i.e. before we could say with any assurance ‘Here we agree!’ doubts that clash with the contract, he can simply resign Anyone who has ever had this experience and can still be the office and thus remain true to his conscience. What intolerant—can still hate his neighbour because he does not “freedom of conscience” or “rights of man” permit him to think or express himself on religious matters in the same violate a contract?’ way as he does—is someone I wouldn’t want for a friend Oh, all right then! I shan’t bring against this semblance because has divested himself of all humanity. of justice the counter-arguments that can be derived from And you, my fellow-men! You take a man with whom you the self-evident principles that I have presented. What’s the may have never discussed such matters, and point of unnecessary repetitions? But for humanity’s sake! •you put before him the subtlest propositions of meta- consider what the results of this procedure have been among physics and religion, clothed in the same words—the the most civilized people. Count all the occupants of your so-called symbols—as they wore centuries ago; academic chairs and pulpits who have their doubts about •you make him affirm, ·swearing· by the holiest of many a proposition to which they swore when they took names, that he means by these words precisely what office; take all the bishops who sit in the House of Lords, all you mean; and that you and he mean the same thing the truly great men who hold high office in England and can as the person who wrote them down centuries ago; no longer accept the Thirty-nine Articles as unconditionally •make him affirm that he subscribes to these propo- as they did when they were first set before them. Count sitions with all his heart, and has no lingering doubt them! and then still say that my oppressed nation can’t be concerning any of them. granted civil liberty because so many of its members think With this sworn agreement you then connect office and little of an oath! – God keep my heart free from misanthropic honour, power and influence—enticements that can easily thoughts! These sad reflections could easily give them the remove many a contradiction and suppress many a doubt. upper hand in me. And if it eventually turns out that the man’s convictions are No! Out of respect for mankind I’m more inclined to not what he claimed them to be, you accuse him of the worst think that the perjury these men are accused of is something

22 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 15. Summary of Section I

they don’t recognize as perjury. [The German words for ‘oath’ and others who are weak enough to resort to them shouldn’t be ‘perjury’ are linked: Eid and Meineid.] Perhaps sound reason tells condemned outright. I wouldn’t accuse men of their calibre them that no-one—neither state nor church—had any right of perjury, but only of human weakness. •to make them swear in matters of faith; •to connect office, honours, and dignity with the belief in certain propositions 15. Summary of Section I and a willingness to swear to them, i.e. to make the belief in certain propositions a condition on having these benefits. To conclude this section I will recapitulate the results to Perhaps they think that such a condition is in itself null which my reflections have led me. and void, because no-one’s interests are served by its being State and church have for their aim the promotion by kept and no-one’s rights and possessions are harmed if it public measures of human happiness in this life and in the is broken.4 So if a wrong was committed (and they are future life. in no position to deny that this is the case), it happened Both act on men’s convictions and actions, on principles back at the time when the promised advantages tempted and their application; the state by means involving the them to take that inadmissible oath. It’s too late now to relations between man and man, or between man and nature; remedy this evil—least of all by resigning the office they have and the church, the state’s religion, by means involving the obtained in this way. Back then they invoked God’s most relations between man and God. The state treats man as the holy name in a manner that he would certainly regard as immortal son of the earth; religion treats him as the image of intolerable, in order to obtain permissible earthly advantages. his Creator. But what they did can’t be undone by now renouncing the Principles are free. Convictions by their very nature can’t benefits they got from it. In fact, if they resigned their posts be affected by coercion or bribery. They have to do with and publicly said why, the confusion, scandal and other man’s faculty for thinking and judging, and must be decided bad results that would probably ensue would only make by the criterion of truth or untruth. Good and evil have to do things worse. So it would be much better for them and their with man’s faculty for approving and disapproving. Fear and near and dear—and also for their fellow-men—if they let the hope guide his impulses. Reward and punishment direct his matter rest and went on giving the state and church the will, spur his energy, encourage, entice, or deter him. services for that Providence has made them able and willing But if principles—·i.e. convictions·—are to make man to render. They have a vocation for public service, but it happy, he mustn’t be scared or wheedled into adopting them. consists in their ability and willingness to do it, not in their Only the judgment reached by his intellect can be accepted convictions about eternal truths and rational propositions as valid. To let ideas of good and evil interfere with his which basically concern only themselves and are none of thoughts is to put an unauthorized judge in charge. their fellow-men’s business. – Although some men are too Thus, neither church nor state has any right to coerce scrupulous to owe their fortune to such intricate excuses, the men’s principles and convictions in any way whatsoever. 4 A condition is a valid part of a contract only if it’s conceivable that it might have an influence on deciding cases of conflict. But it’s only through an erroneous conscience that opinions can be linked with external advantages, and I doubt that they can ever constitute a legally valid condition.

23 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 15. Summary of Section I

Neither church nor state is authorized to connect principles What if the harm has already been done? Suppose the and convictions with •privileges, •rights, •claims on persons state appoints and pays a teacher for propounding certain and •claims to things, thus weakening through outside fixed doctrinal opinions, and the man later discovers that interference the influence of the power of truth on men’s these doctrines are baseless. What is he to do? How can he thoughts and beliefs. Not even the social contract could give extricate his foot from the trap that his erroneous conscience state or church any such right. For a contract concerning led him into? things whose very nature makes them inalienable [= ‘incapable Three routes are open to him here. (a) He keeps the truth of being transferred’] is intrinsically invalid and rules itself out. to himself and continues to teach untruth against his better Not even the most sacred oath can change the nature judgment. (b) He resigns from his position without declaring of things. Oaths don’t create new duties; they are merely why. (c) He openly testifies to the truth, and leaves it to the solemn confirmations of something to that is already our state to settle his position and salary, or whatever else he is duty by nature or through a contract. If there isn’t already to suffer because of his resolute love of truth. such a duty, the oath is an empty invocation of God that None of these routes, it seems to me, is to be blocked may be blasphemous but can’t create an obligation. off under all circumstances—·not even (a) the first of them·. Men can swear only to what they know through their I can conceive of a state of mind a teacher might be in external senses—to what they saw, heard, touched. Percep- that would lead the all-righteous Judge to pardon him tions of the internal senses can’t be confirmed by oath. . . . for continuing to mix into his mainly healthy and helpful If a man has taken such an oath, all it obliges him to is teaching some untruth that the state has endorsed because regret that he is to blame for a thoughtless action. If at this of an error of its conscience. At least I would be careful not moment I affirm an opinion under oath, I’m free to disavow to accuse such an otherwise honest teacher of ‘hypocrisy’ or it a moment later. The misdeed of taking a vain oath [Eid] ‘Jesuitry’ unless I thoroughly knew his circumstances and has been committed even if I retain the opinion; and I don’t state of mind—more thoroughly perhaps than any man ever commit perjury [Meineid] if I repudiate it. can know his neighbour’s state of mind. Anyone who boasts Bear in mind that according to my principles the state of having never spoken on such matters differently from isn’t authorized to connect any doctrinal opinions with in- what he thought either •hasn’t ever thought at all, or •finds come, offices of honour, or privilege. As regards the teaching it advantageous right now to strut about with an untruth profession: the state has a duty to appoint people who are that his own heart contradicts. able •to teach wisdom and virtue and •to spread the useful When it comes to convictions and principles, then, religion truths that human society’s happiness directly rests on. All and state are on a par: both must avoid any semblance of the details must be left to the best of the teacher’s knowledge coercion or bribery, and confine themselves to teaching, [Wissen] and conscience [Gewissen]; otherwise, endless confu- scolding, persuading, and reprimanding. It’s different with sion and conflicts of duties will arise that will often lead even actions. The relations between God and man require actions virtuous people into hypocrisy and unscrupulousness. No only insofar as they lead to convictions; the relations between offence against the dictates of reason remains unavenged! man and man require actions period. An action brought

24 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 16. Excommunication about by coercion can still be •beneficial to the public; but an Excommunication and the right to banish, which the action is •religious only to the extent to which it is performed state may sometimes permit itself to exercise, are flatly voluntarily and with the right intention. opposed to the spirit of religion. To banish, to exclude, to So the state can compel actions beneficial to the public; turn away the brother who wants share in my spiritual uplift it can reward and punish, distribute offices and honours, and raise up his heart to God in union with me! – If religion disgrace and banishment, in order to get men to act in ways doesn’t allow itself any imposed punishments, it should least whose intrinsic value doesn’t have a strong enough effect on of all allow this torture of the soul that is felt only by a their minds. That is why the social contract could and had person who truly has religion. Think of all the wretches to grant to the state the most perfect •right to do this as well who from time immemorial were supposed to be improved by as the •ability to do it. So the state is a moral person [see being excommunicated and condemned. Reader! Whatever Glossary] that has its own goods and prerogatives, which it visible church, synagogue, or mosque you belong to, see can dispose of as it pleases. if you don’t find more true religion among the host of the excommunicated than among the far greater host of those who excommunicated them! – Now, excommunication either 16. Excommunication (i) does or (ii) doesn’t have civil consequences. (i) If it Divine religion is far from all this. It relates to actions in the does produce civil misery, that burden will fall only on the same way that it relates to convictions, because it commands noble-minded man who believes that he owes this sacrifice to actions only as signs of convictions. It is a moral person, but divine truth. Someone who has no religion would have to be mad to expose himself to the least danger for the sake of an the rest of the clause, literally: its rights don’t know any imaginary truth. (ii) If the consequences of excommunication force. are only of a spiritual kind, as some people like to believe, which may mean: its rights don’t include any right to use then again they’ll afflict only the man who is still susceptible force. to this kind of feeling. The irreligious man laughs at such or it may mean: it can’t use force to back up any of its rights. things and remains impenitent. It doesn’t •drive men with an iron rod; it •leads them with But how is it possible to separate excommunication from a halter of love. It draws no avenging sword, distributes all civil consequences? I have said this before, and I think no temporal [see Glossary] goods, assumes no right to any I was right: to grant the church disciplinary power without earthly goods, and claims no external power over the mind. injuring civil happiness is like what the supreme Judge said Its weapons are reason and persuasion; its strength is the to the prosecutor [this refers to Job 2:6]: I place him in your divine power of truth. The punishments it threatens, just hands, but spare his life! The commentators add: ‘Break the like the rewards it promises, are effects of love—improving barrel, but don’t let the wine run out!’ Every ecclesiastical and beneficial for the person to whom they come. These excommunication or ban has some civil consequences for are the signs by which I recognize you, daughter of God! the person who is expelled—minimally an effect on his civil Religion! You who alone grant bliss on earth as in heaven. reputation and his good name, and he needs those if he is to

25 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 16. Excommunication pursue his occupation and be useful to his fellow-men, i.e. concepts of reason, turning them into soaring sensations. to be civilly happy. [In this context, ‘sympathy’ means ‘echoing the feelings of others in one’s Some people appeal to the law of nature. Every society, own feelings’.] When the heart clings too strongly to sensual they say, has the right of exclusion. Why shouldn’t a pleasures to listen to the voice of reason, when it is on religious society have it too? the verge of drawing reason itself into its tangle, then let it I reply: this is precisely where a religious society consti- be seized here with a thrill of pious enthusiasm, burning tutes an exception. By virtue of a higher law—·higher than with the fire of devotion and bringing joys of a higher order the law of nature·—no society can exercise a right that is that outweigh, even in this life, the joys of the senses. And flatly opposite to the primary purpose of the society itself. would you turn away from the door the sick man who most As a worthy clergyman of this city has said: To expel a needs this medicine? (If he doesn’t feel this need, and in dissident from the church is like forbidding a sick person his delirium imagines that he is healthy, that is a sign of to enter a pharmacy. The fact is that the most essential the intensity of his need.) Shouldn’t your first concern be to purpose of religious society is mutual spiritual help. It works restore this sensation to him, calling back to life the part of by transferring truth from the mind to the heart by the magic his soul that is, so to speak, threatened with gangrene?. . . . power of sympathy, aiming to animate the sometimes lifeless

26 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 1. Some good people

SECTION II: JUDAISM

1. Some good people counter to it. . . . All ecclesiastical coercion will be unlawful, all external power in religious matters will be violent This contention ·of mine that no church should excommuni- usurpation; and if this is so, the mother church can’t bestow cate anyone· flatly contradicts a principle that everyone else a right that doesn’t belong to it, or give away a power that accepts. I presented the essential point of it on a previous it has unjustly grabbed. It may be that this abuse, through occasion. Dohm’s excellent work On the Civil Improvement some common prejudice or other, has become so widespread of the Jews led to the inquiry: and so deeply rooted in the minds of men that it wouldn’t To what extent should a settled colony be permitted to be feasible—or anyway wouldn’t be advisable—to abolish retain its own jurisdiction in •ecclesiastical and civil it all at once, without wise preparation. But in that case, matters in general and in •the right of excommunica- we should at least oppose it from afar, setting up a dam tion and expulsion in particular? against its further expansion. When we can’t eradicate an Legal power of the church—the right of excommunication—if evil completely, we should at least cut off its roots. a colony is to have these it must have been given them by the state or by the mother church. Anyone who has this That is where my reflections took me, and I ventured to 5 right by virtue of the social contract must have relinquished submit my thoughts to the judgment of the public although or ceded to the colony the part of it that concerns the colony. I could not at that time state my reasons as fully as I have But what if no-one can have such a right? What if neither done in Section I above. the state nor the mother church herself can claim any right I have the good fortune to live in a state in which these to use coercion in religious matters? What if according to ideas of mine are neither new nor particularly striking. The the principles of sound reason (whose divine status we must wise monarch by whom this state is ruled has from the all acknowledge) neither state nor church has beginning of his reign worked to put mankind in possession •any right in matters of faith except the right to teach, of its full rights in matters of faith. He is the first monarch •any power except the power to persuade, in this century who has never lost sight of the whole scope of •any discipline other than the discipline of reason and the wise maxim: ‘Men were created for each other. Instruct principles? your neighbour, or tolerate him!’6 He did indeed leave If this can be proved and made clear to common sense, intact the privileges of the external religion that he found nothing can have the power to maintain a right that runs to be in place ·when he came to the throne·; but this was 5 In the Preface to Manasseh Ben Israel’s The Deliverance of the Jews. 6 These are the words of my friend the late Isaak Iselin, in one of his last papers in Journal of Mankind. . . . It is incomprehensible to me how I could have overlooked this truly wise man when mentioning the beneficent men who first tried to propagate the principles of unlimited tolerance in Germany. It was he who taught these principles to their fullest extent, earlier and more clearly than anyone else in our language. In order to do belated justice to a man who was so just to everyone in his lifetime, I quote with pleasure from ·his· review in Journal for October 1782 of my Preface to Rabbi Manasseh’s book, where this subject comes up: [footnote continues on the next page]

27 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. A reviewer who missed the point wise moderation on his part. It may still take centuries of greatly in our principles, I couldn’t help expressing my cultivation and preparation before men get it: privileges on wholehearted admiration and respect for them on account of account of religion are unlawful and indeed useless, and it these sublime convictions. would be a real blessing if all civil discrimination on account of religion were totally abolished. Nevertheless, under the 2. A reviewer who missed the point rule of this wise monarch the nation has become so used to tolerance and forbearance in matters of faith that coercion, Many other readers and reviewers behaved quite strangely in excommunication and the right of expulsion are no longer this matter. Rather than challenging my arguments they let things that the ordinary populace talk about. them stand. No-one tried to show the slightest connection But what must bring true joy to the heart of every honest between doctrinal opinions and rights. No-one discovered man is how earnestly and zealously some worthy members of any flaw in my argument that someone’s assenting or not the local clergy try to spread these principles of reason—i.e. assenting to certain eternal truths gives him no right over principles of the true fear of God— among the people. Some things, no authority to dispose of goods and minds as he of them have boldly given full approval to my arguments pleases. And yet the immediate conclusion of my argument against the universally worshipped idol Ecclesiastical Law, startled them as though it were an unexpected apparition. applauding their conclusions in public. What a splendid What? So there’s no ecclesiastical law at all? So there’s no notion these men must have of their vocation if they show basis for anything that so many authors—perhaps including such readiness to disregard all secondary considerations! ourselves—have written, read, heard and argued regarding What a noble confidence they must have in the power of ecclesiastical law? – This, struck them as going too far; but truth if they are willing to set it squarely on its own pedestal there must be some hidden flaw in the argument if the result without any other prop! Even though otherwise we differ is not necessarily true.

‘The editor of Journal of Mankind [i.e. Iselin himself] agrees entirely also with what Mendelssohn says about the legislative rights of the authorities concerning the opinions held by the citizens, and about the agreements that individuals may enter into among themselves with regard to such opinions. And he [Iselin] adopted this way of thinking not only since Dohm and Lessing wrote, but professed it more than thirty years ago. He also acknowledged long ago that so-called ‘religious tolerance’ is not a favour but a duty on the part of the government. It couldn’t have been stated more clearly than he did in his book Dreams of a Friend of Mankind: “If one or more religions are introduced into a state, a wise and just sovereign won’t infringe on their rights to the advantage of his own. The sovereign owes protection and justice to every church or association that has divine worship for its aim. To deny this to them, even for the sake of favouring the best religion, would be contrary to the spirit of true piety.” ‘With respect to civil rights, the members of all religions are equal, with the sole exception of those whose opinions run counter to the principles of human and civil duties. Such a religion can’t lay claim to any rights in the state. Those who have the misfortune to belong to it can expect tolerance only as long as they don’t disturb the social order by unjust and harmful acts. If they perform such acts, they must be punished, not for their opinions but for their deeds.’ [The footnote continues with some clearing up of a misunderstanding (not a quarrel) that had occurred between Mendelssohn and Iselin, followed by some temperate and forgiving remarks on Iselin’s tendency to anti-semitism.]

28 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. A reviewer who missed the point

A reviewer in the Göttingen News quotes my assertion Each of them presupposes certain basic concepts, of which that no •right to persons and things is connected with it gives no further account. Yet in the entire sum of human •doctrinal opinions, and that all the contracts and agree- knowledge there’s not a single point that is beyond question, ments in the world can’t make such a right possible; and to not the least speck of anything that can’t be investigated. If which he adds: ‘All this is new and harsh. First principles my doubt lies beyond the limits of this tribunal, I must be are negated, and all dispute comes to an end.’ referred to another. Somewhere I must be heard and directed Indeed, it is a matter of refusing to recognise first prin- along the right path. ciples. – But should that put an end to all dispute? Must The case that the reviewer cites as an example against principles never be called into question? If so, men of the me completely misses the mark. He says: Pythagorean school could argue forever about how their ‘Let us apply them (the denied principles) to a particu- teacher happened to come by his golden hip, with no-one lar case. The Jewish community in Berlin appoints a daring to ask: Did Pythagoras actually have a golden hip? person who is to circumcise its male children accord- Every game has its laws, every contest its rules, according ing to the laws of its religion. This person’s contract to which the umpire decides. If you want to win the prize you assigns him an agreed income, a particular rank in must submit to the principles. But anyone wanting to think the community, etc. After a while he acquires doubts about the theory of games is certainly free to examine the concerning the doctrine or law of circumcision; he fundamentals. Similarly in a court of law. A criminal court refuses to fulfill the contract. Does he still retain the judge who had to try a murderer induced him to confess rights he acquired by contract?. . . . his crime. But the scoundrel maintained that he knew no . . . . The case is admittedly possible, though I hope it will reason why it shouldn’t be just as permissible to murder a never occur.7 What is this example, aimed as it is directly at man as to kill an animal, for his own advantage. To this me, supposed to prove? Surely not that according to reason fiend the judge could fairly have replied: ‘ You deny the basic •rights over persons and goods are connected with—indeed, principles, fellow! There’s no more arguing with you. But based on—•doctrinal opinions? Or that man-made laws and you’ll at least understand that we are permitted, for our own contracts can make such a right possible? [Mendelssohn pre- advantage, to rid the earth of such a monster.’ But that’s sumably meant ‘. . . make such a connection possible’.] The reviewer not the answer he should have got from the priest charged says that those two points are his chief concern here, but with preparing him for death. He was obliged to discuss the neither of them is relevant to the case he invented: the principles with him and to remove his doubts, if he seriously circumciser would have the benefits of his income and rank had any. It’s the same in the fine arts and the sciences. not because he accepts the doctrinal opinion, but because 7 Among the Jews, no-one receives pay or a specific rank in the community in return for the office of circumcision. Rather, anyone who has the skill for it performs this meritorious act with pleasure. Indeed the father, who strictly speaking is obliged to perform the duty of circumcising his son, usually has to choose among several competitors who apply for it. The only reward the circumciser can expect for his work is being seated at the head of the table at the festive meal following the circumcision, and saying the blessing after the meal. – According to my seemingly ‘new and harsh’ theory, all religious offices ought to be filled in this way.

29 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 2. A reviewer who missed the point of the operation he performs in place of the fathers. If his such a critical decision? conscience prevents him from continuing this work, he will However, this investigation doesn’t lie squarely on my of course have to give up the agreed-upon salary. But what path, and has almost nothing to do with the two questions does this have to do with granting a person privileges because on which everything depends, and which I now repeat: he assents to this or that doctrine. . . .? – For a ·real· case (i) Are there, according to the laws of reason, rights over per- that has some resemblance to this fictitious example you sons and things that are connected with doctrinal opinions, need something like this: the state hires and pays teachers and are acquired by giving assent to them? to propagate certain doctrines in a specified way, and the teachers later find themselves conscience-bound to depart (ii) Can contracts and agreements produce perfect rights from the prescribed doctrines. I dealt at length with this and enforceable duties where there aren’t already imperfect case in Section I; it has so often has led to loud and heated rights and duties independently of any contract? disputes, and I wanted to discuss it in accordance with If I’m to be found guilty of error, ·an affirmative answer to· my principles. It seems to me not to fit your view of this one of these propositions must be shown to follow from nat- matter ·any better than did your damp-squib circumcision ural law. Finding my assertion ‘new and harsh’ is irrelevant example·. You may recall how I distinguished •actions that if the assertion doesn’t contradict the truth. I haven’t yet are demanded as actions from •actions that merely signify found any author raising these questions and examining convictions. ·Of the following pair, (a) is clearly right, and (b) them in relation to ecclesiastical power and the right of is not significantly different from it·: excommunication. They all start from the point of view that (a) A creditor is paid what he is owed, by court order; there is a political right over holy matters; but everyone the debtor can think what he likes about whether the shapes it in his own way, and gives it sometimes an invisible order was fair. person, sometimes this or that visible person. Even Hobbes, (b) A foreskin is cut off; the circumciser can think and who in this matter ventured further than anyone else from believe anything he likes about this practice. the established concepts, couldn’t completely disengage But how can one bring this to bear on a teacher of religious himself from this idea. He concedes such a right, and only truths, whose teachings can’t do much good if his mind searches for the person who can least harmfully be entrusted and heart don’t agree with them, i.e. if they don’t flow from with it. All believe that the meteor is visible, and put their inner conviction? – In the Section I discussion that I have efforts only into trying by different systems to fix its altitude. mentioned I said •that I wouldn’t venture to tell such a It wouldn’t be a shocking event if an unprejudiced person hard-pressed teacher how to behave as an honest man, or to with much less ability were to look straight at the place in the reproach him if he acted otherwise, and •that in my opinion sky where it was supposed to appear and convince himself everything depends on the time, the circumstances, and the of the truth: no such meteor can be seen. state in which he finds himself. In a case like this, who can judge how conscientious his neighbour is? Who can force him to use a criterion that he mightn’t think appropriate for

30 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 3. Fidelity to the Mosaic religion

3. Fidelity to the Mosaic religion And in another place he says this:

I come now to a far more important objection that has been ‘The whole ecclesiastical system of Moses, along with raised against me, and that has chieﬂy caused me to write its instruction in duties, was tied in with the strictest this work. Again without refuting my arguments, critics have ecclesiastical laws. The arm of the church was pro- brought against them the sacred authority of the Mosaic vided with the sword of the curse. “Cursed be he”, it religion that I profess. What are the laws of Moses but a is written, “who does not obey all the words of this system of religious government, of the powers and rights law” etc. And this curse was in the hands of the ﬁrst of religion? An anonymous author in relation to this topic ministers of the church. Ecclesiastical law armed with writes: power has always been one of the chief cornerstones of the Jewish religion itself, and a primary article in ‘Reason may endorse the view •that all ecclesiastical the belief-system of your forefathers. So how can you, law and the power of an ecclesiastical court by which my dear Mendelssohn, remain an adherent of that opinions are enforced or constrained is absurd; •that faith while shaking the entire structure by removing it’s inconceivable that such a law should be well- its cornerstones, which is what you do when you founded; and •that human skill can’t create anything contest the ecclesiastical law that has been given for which nature hasn’t produced the seed. But through Moses and purports to be founded on divine though everything you say on this subject may be rea- revelation?’ sonable [he is addressing me], it directly contradicts •the faith of your fathers, strictly understood, and This objection cuts me to the heart. I have to admit even •the principles of the ·Jewish· church, which aren’t many of my coreligionists would regard that account of taken from scholars’ commentaries but are explicitly Judaism as correct, apart from some of the terminology. laid down in the Books of Moses themselves. Common Now, if this were the truth and I were convinced of it, I sense says that there can’t be worship without convic- would indeed shame-facedly retract my propositions and tion, and that any act of worship resulting from coer- bring reason into captivity under the yoke of faith—but no! cion ceases to be worship. Obeying divine commands Why should I pretend? Authority can humble but it can’t out of fear of punishment is slavery which. . . .can instruct; it can suppress reason but it can’t put it in fetters. never be pleasing to God. Yet Moses does connect coer- If it were true that the word of God so obviously contradicted cion and positive punishment with the nonobservance my reason, the most I could do would be to silence my of duties related to the worship of God. His statutory reason. But my unrefuted arguments would still reappear ecclesiastical law decrees the punishment of stoning in the secret recesses of my heart and be transformed into and death for the sabbath-breaker, the blasphemer disquieting doubts, and the doubts would resolve themselves of the divine name, and others who depart from his into childlike prayers, into fervent pleas for illumination. I laws.’8 would cry out with the Psalmist: 8 The Search for Light and Right in a Letter to Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin, 1782.

31 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 4. Judaism and Christianity

Lord, send me Thy light, Thy truth, systems of religion that lie before your eyes in various that they may guide and bring me forms and versions. Perhaps you have come nearer unto Thy holy mountain, unto Thy dwelling place! to the Christian faith, having •torn yourself from the slavery of your church’s iron grip, and •started It is in any event harsh and offensive to credit me with teaching the liberal system of a more rational worship having the odious intention of overthrowing the religion I of God, which constitutes the true character of the profess and of renouncing it surreptitiously but not openly. Christian religion, thanks to which we •have escaped That is what I am accused of by the anonymous Searcher for coercion and burdensome ceremonies and •no longer Light and Right and by Daniel Mörschel, the non-anonymous link the true worship of God either to Samaria or author of a postscript to the work of the ‘Searcher’. This Jerusalem, but •see the essence of religion, in the sort of coming-to-conclusions ought to be banished forever words of our teacher, wherever the true worshippers from interchanges between learned men. Not everyone who worship the Father in spirit and in truth [John 4:24].’ holds a certain opinion is prepared also to accept all its This suggestion is presented with a good deal of solemnity consequences, however strictly they follow from it; ·so a and pathos. But, my dear fellow, should I take this ‘step’ person’s not accepting a consequence shouldn’t be automat- without first thinking about whether it really will extricate ically taken as evidence the he doesn’t sincerely accept the me from the confusion you think I am in? If it’s true that the opinion·. Such imputations of bad faith are malevolent, and cornerstones of my house are dislodged and the structure lead only to bitterness and strife from which truth rarely threatens to collapse, would it be wise for me to remove my gains anything. belongings from the ground floor to the top floor for safety? Am I more secure there? As you know, Christianity is built 4. Judaism and Christianity upon Judaism, and if that falls Christianity has to collapse with it in one heap of ruins. You say that my arguments [Regarding ‘the wishes that Lavater addressed to you’: Johann Lavater undermine the foundation of Judaism, and you offer me the did a German translation of a book called Evidence for Christianity, in his safety of your upper floor—mustn’t I suppose that you’re Preface to which he challenged Mendelssohn to refute the book or, if he making fun of me? When there seems to be a contradiction couldn’t do that, to ‘do what wisdom, the love of truth and honesty must between truth and truth, between Scripture and reason, bid him’, meaning ‘convert to Christianity’.] surely a Christian who is in earnest about ‘light and truth’ Indeed, the Searcher goes so far as to address me thus: won’t challenge the Jew to a fight! Rather, he’ll join him in ‘Might the remarkable step you have now taken actu- an effort to discover the source of the trouble. For this is ally be a step towards fulfilling the wishes that Lavater their common concern. Whatever else they have to settle addressed to you? After that appeal, you have surely between them can be postponed to a later time. Right now reflected further on the subject of Christianity and, they must join forces to avert the danger, and either discover with the impartiality of an incorruptible searcher after the logical mistake or show that what has frightened them is truth, weighed more exactly the value of the Christian only a seeming contradiction.

32 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 4. Judaism and Christianity

I could in this way have avoided the trap without engaging he expects contentment in this life and unlimited happiness in any further discussion with the Searcher. But what good thereafter; but he would very much like—What do I know would that do me? His associate, Mörschel, without knowing of what the dear man wouldn’t like and nevertheless would me personally, has seen all too deeply into my game! In my like? For a start, then, to calm the kindhearted author of Preface ·to Manasseh Ben Israel’s book·, he reports, he has this letter: found signs leading him to believe that I am as far removed I have never publicly contested the Christian religion, from the religion into which I was born as from the one that and I’ll never engage in dispute with its true adherents. he received from his fathers. To back this up, after referring So that I won’t be accused of hinting that to a passage (a) where I mention—all in one line—pagans, •I have in my hands triumphant weapons with Jews, Moslems, and adherents of natural religion, and ask which to combat Christianity, if I were so in- for tolerance for all of them, and another. . . .(b) where I speak clined; and that of eternal truths that religion should teach, he quotes some •the Jews have secret information, hidden doc- of my actual words: uments that put the facts in a different light ‘(c) Reason’s house of worship needs no locked doors. from the one in which the Christians present It doesn’t have to guard anything inside, or prevent them, anyone from entering. Anyone who wants to observe or other pretences of the sort that we have been quietly or to participate is most welcome to the devout considered to be capable of inventing or have actually person in his hour of spiritual renewal.’ been accused of—to remove any such suspicion once I gather that in Mörschel’s opinion no adherent of revelation and for all I hereby testify before the eyes of the public would (a) plead so openly for toleration of naturalists, or (b) •that I at least have nothing new to advance against speak so loudly of eternal truths that religion should teach, the faith of the Christians; •that as far as I know we and that (c) a true Christian or Jew should hesitate to call his ·Jews· don’t know of any accounts of the historical house of prayer ‘reason’s house of worship’. I have no idea facts (and can’t present any documents) except the what could have led him to these ideas; yet they •contain the ones that everyone knows; •that I therefore have whole basis for his conjecture ·that I have drifted away from nothing to advance that hasn’t already been stated Judaism· and •induce him, as he says, and repeated countless times by Jews and naturalists not to invite me ·as Lavater did· to accept the religion and replied to by the Christians time and again. he accepts or if I can’t join it to refute it, but rather to It seems to me that in the course of so many centuries, and beg me in the name of all who have the cause of truth especially in our own bookish century, enough has been at heart to express myself clearly and deﬁnitely on the said and repeated on this topic. Since the parties have run topic that must always be the most important thing out of new things to offer, it’s time to close the ﬁle. If you for man. have eyes, see. If you have reason, examine—and live by He assures me that he doesn’t aim to convert me; nor does your conclusions. What’s the use of champions standing he want to arouse objections against the religion from which by the roadside and offering battle to every passer-by? Too

33 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 5. Revealed religion much talk about something doesn’t make it any clearer; But they didn’t receive any revelation of rather, it makes the light of truth even fainter. Take any •doctrinal opinions, proposition you please and go on for long enough talking, •saving truths, or writing or arguing about it—for or against—and you can •universal propositions of reason. be sure that it will continue to lose more and more of any The Eternal ·God· reveals these to us and to all other men, convincingness that it had to start with. Too much detail always through nature and thing, never through word and obstructs the view of the whole. So Mörschel has nothing script. to fear. He certainly won’t become, through me, the cause I fear that this may be found astonishing, and again strike of objections against a religion from which so many of my some readers as ‘new and harsh’. Not much attention has fellow-men expect ‘contentment in this life and unlimited been given, ever, to this difference: supernatural legislation happiness thereafter’. has been seen as supernatural revelation of religion, and Judaism has been spoken of as though it were simply an 5. Revealed religion earlier revelation of religious propositions and doctrines necessary for man’s salvation. So I’ll have to explain myself I must, however, also do justice to his searching eye. What more fully; and to avoid misunderstandings I’ll have to go he saw was partly right. This is true: I recognize no eternal back to some underlying concepts, so that you and I can truths except those that can be not only •grasped by human start out from the same position and stay in step with one reason but also •established and veriﬁed by human powers another. [Mendelssohn’s italics]. But when Mörschel supposes that I Truths are called eternal if they are propositions that can’t maintain this without departing from the religion of my aren’t subject to time and remain the same for ever. They fathers he’s being led astray by a wrong idea of what Judaism are of two kinds: is. I regard this ·thesis about eternal truths· as an essential (i) necessary truths, which are in themselves unalter- point of the Jewish religion, conspicuously marking it off able; their permanence is based on their essence— from Christianity. In short: I believe that Judaism knows they are true in this and no other way because this is of no ‘revealed religion’ in the Christian sense of the phrase. the only way in which they are conceivable; The Israelites have a divine legislation. What Moses revealed (ii) contingent truths, whose permanence is based on to them in a miraculous and supernatural manner were their reality—they are universally true in this and no •laws, other way because they became real in this and no •commandments, other way, this being the best of all the possibilities. •ordinances, In other words, necessary as well as contingent truths ﬂow •rules of life, from a common source, the wellspring of all truth: the •instruction in God’s will regarding how they should former (i) from God’s intellect, the latter (ii) from God’s will. conduct themselves in order to attain temporal [see The propositions of necessary truths are true because God Glossary] and eternal happiness. represents them to himself in this and no other way; the

34 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 5. Revealed religion contingent ones because God approved them and considered cite authorities and appeal to the credibility of men who have them to be in conformity with his wisdom in this and no maintained them, but dissect the ideas into their essential other way. Examples of (i) are the propositions of pure elements and present them to your pupil one by one, until mathematics and of the art of logic; examples of (ii) are his internal sense perceives their joints and connections. the general propositions of physics and psychology, the The instructions we can give others regarding such truths laws of nature according to which this universe—bodies and is, in Socrates’ apt phrase, merely a kind of midwifery. We spirits—is governed. The former are unchangeable even for can’t put into their minds anything that isn’t actually already the Omnipotent, because God himself can’t make his infinite there; but we can make it less of an effort to bring to light intellect changeable; but the latter are subject to God’s will what was hidden, making perceptible and evident what was and are immutable only to the extent that it pleases his holy previously unperceived. will ·to keep them so·, i.e. to the extent that they fit in with (ii) Contingent truths require not only reason but also his intentions. His omnipotence could introduce other laws observation. If we want to know what laws the Creator has in their place, and it can allow exceptions to occur whenever prescribed for his creation, and what general rules govern there’s a need for them. the changes that occur in it, we must first Besides these eternal truths, there are (iii) temporal, his- experience, observe, and test individual cases, thus torical truths; things that occurred once and may never occur making use of the evidence of our senses; again; propositions that came true through a confluence of and then next causes and effects at one point in time and space, and are determine by means of reason what many particular therefore to be thought of as true only in respect to that point cases have in common. in time and space. All the truths of history—using ‘history’ In this context we’ll have to accept many things—on faith in its broadest sense—are of this kind: events of remote ages and authority—from others. We don’t live long enough to that once happened and are reported to us, but which we experience everything ourselves, so we must often rely on can’t ever observe for ourselves. credible fellow-men, assuming that the observations and Just as these classes of propositions and truths differ experiments they say they have made were correct. But by nature, so too they differ in respect of. . . .how men we trust them only when we know and are convinced that convince themselves and others of them. (i) The necessary the subject-matter still exists, so that their experiments truths are founded upon reason, i.e. on an unchangeable and observations could be repeated and tested by ourselves coherence and essential connection of ideas, according to or by competent others. And if the thesis in question is which they either presuppose or exclude one another. All important, having a considerable import for our happiness mathematical and logical proofs are of this kind. They all or that of others, we are far less willing to rely on ·even· show the possibility or impossibility of thinking certain ideas the most credible witnesses’ reports of their •observations in association with certain others. If you want to instruct and •experiments. In such A case we seek an opportunity someone in them what you must do is not •commend them to repeat •them ourselves, becoming convinced of them by to his belief but •force them on his reason, so to speak. Don’t their own showing. . . .

35 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 5. Revealed religion

Historical truths, however—passages that occur only once things and miracles to occur in nature where this is required in the book of nature, so to speak—must to confirm authority and credibility. But eternal truths, when the rest of that clause: durch sich selbst erläutert werden, they are useful for men’s salvation and happiness, are taught oder bleiben unverständlich; by God in a manner more appropriate to him; not through sounds or written characters that are understood by some straightforwardly translated: be explained through them- individuals in some places, but through creation itself and its selves, or else remain unintelligible; internal relations, which can be read and understood by all what Mendelssohn may mean: be understood purely in terms men. And he doesn’t confirm them by miracles, which affect of what happened then and there; you won’t be helped to only historical belief; but he awakens the mind that he has grasp what happened by bringing in •events at other times created, and gives it an opportunity to •observe the relations and/or places or •general rules of nature; of things, to •observe itself, and to •become convinced of the that is, they can be sensorily perceived only by those who truths that it is destined to understand here below. were present at the time and place of their occurrence in So I do not believe this: nature. Everyone else must accept them on authority and P: The powers of human reason are insufficient to testimony. . . . The event itself and the direct observation of persuade men of the eternal truths that are indispens- it. . . .no longer exist in nature. The senses can’t convince able to human happiness, so that God had to ‘reveal’ them—·i.e. those who weren’t there at the time·—of the truth. them in a supernatural manner. In historical matters, the authority and credibility of the Those who do believe this think they are magnifying God’s narrator are the only evidence. Without testimony we can’t goodness, but really they are doing less than justice to his be convinced of any historical truth. Without authority, the goodness or his omnipotence: he is good enough to reveal truth of history vanishes along with the event itself. to men the truths on which their happiness depends, but So whenever it fits with God’s intentions that men be he isn’t omnipotent; or else he isn’t good enough to make convinced of some particular truth, his wisdom grants them them able to discover these truths themselves. Moreover, the most appropriate means of arriving at it. (i) If it’s a according to P, the need for a supernatural revelation spreads necessary truth, God gives them the required degree of wider than revelation itself. If mankind must be corrupt and reason. (ii) If a law of nature is to be made known to miserable without revelation, why has the far greater part them, he gives them the spirit of observation; and (iii) if a of mankind lived from time immemorial without any true historical truth is to be preserved for posterity, God confirms revelation? Why must the two Indies wait until it pleases its historical certainty and places the narrator’s credibility the Europeans to send them a few comforters to bring them beyond all doubt. [Strictly speaking, Mendelssohn writes of these a message without which—according to P—they can’t live things as being done (not by God but) by God’s wisdom.] Only where either virtuously or happily? a message which in their historical truths are concerned, I should think, is it fitting circumstances and state of knowledge they can’t rightly for supreme wisdom •to instruct men in a human manner, comprehend or properly use? i.e. through words and writing, and •to cause extraordinary

36 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 6. Mankind and progress

6. Mankind and progress Epicurus or a Lucretius, a Helvetius or a Hume criticises the inadequacy of this way of conceiving things and (blame this According to the concepts of true Judaism, all the earth’s on human weakness!) strays too far in the other direction, inhabitants are destined for happiness; and the means of playing a deceptive game with the word ‘nature’, Providence attaining it are as widespread as mankind itself, as gen- again raises up from out of the populace men who separate erously distributed as the means of dealing with hunger prejudice from truth, correct the exaggerations on both sides, and other natural needs. There men are left to ·their own· and show that truth can endure even if prejudice is rejected. raw nature, which inwardly feels its powers and uses them, Basically, the material is always the same—there endowed without being able to express itself in words and speech with all the raw but vigorous juices that nature gives it, here except very defectively, stammeringly so to speak. Here with the refined good taste of art, easier to digest though they are aided by science and art, shining brightly through only for the weak. On balance, men’s doings and allowings, words, images, and metaphors by which the perceptions of and the morality of their conduct, can perhaps expect just the inner sense are transformed into a clear knowledge of as good results from that crude way of conceiving things as signs and established as such. [In those two sentences, ‘here’ from these refined and purified concepts. Many a people and ‘there’ are reversed, to keep them in line with what comes later in is destined by Providence to wander through this cycle of the paragraph.] As often as it was useful, Providence caused ideas—some to wander through it more than once—but the wise men to arise in every nation on earth, and gave them mass and weight of its morals may be over-all about the the gift of looking with a clearer eye into themselves as well same during all these various epochs. as all around them—to contemplate God’s works and pass Speaking for myself, I can’t conceive of the upbringing their knowledge on to others. But this isn’t always necessary of the human race in the way that my friend the late G. E. or useful. Very often, as the Psalmist says, the babbling of Lessing imagined it under the influence of who-knows-what children and infants will confound the enemy. The man who historian of mankind. ·It goes like this·: lives simply hasn’t yet cooked up the objections that give the The collective entity of the human race is to be re- sophist so much trouble. For him the word ‘nature’, the mere garded as an individual person whom Providence sent sound, hasn’t yet become a being that seeks to supplant to school here on earth, in order to raise it from the Deity. He doesn’t know much about the difference childhood to manhood. between direct and indirect causality; and he hears and If this child/adult metaphor is to be used at all, then really sees instead the life-giving power of the Deity everywhere—in the human race is in almost every century, child, adult, and every sunrise, in every rain that falls, in every flower that greybeard at the same time though in different regions of blossoms and in every lamb that grazes in the meadow and the world. Here in the cradle, it sucks the breast or lives rejoices in its own existence. There’s something not quite on cream and milk; there it stands in manly armor, eating right in this way of conceiving things; but still it leads directly beef; in another place it leans on a cane and reverts to to the recognition of an invisible, omnipotent being, whom being toothless. Progress is for the individual man whom we have to thank for all the good we enjoy. But as soon as an Providence destines to spend part of his eternity here on

37 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 7. More about revelation earth. Each person goes through life in his own way. One amount of man’s path takes him through flowery meadows, another’s •religion and irreligion, takes him across desolate plains, or over steep mountains •virtue and vice, with dangerous gorges. Yet they all progress in their journey •happiness and misery; towards the happiness for which each of them is destined. if like is compared with like, the bottom line is the same. The But I can’t see that Providence intended to have mankind amounts of these goods and evils are what is needed for the as a whole advance steadily here below and eventually individual man to be educated here below, and to come as perfect itself; at any rate that’s not as well established or close as possible to the perfection for which he is destined. as necessary for the vindication of God’s providence as is usually thought. 7. More about revelation We repeatedly resist all theory and hypotheses, and want to speak of facts, to hear about nothing but facts; and yet we I return to what I was saying ·late in subsection 5·. Judaism pay the least attention to facts precisely where they matter boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are most! You want to guess what designs Providence has for indispensable to salvation—no ‘revealed religion’ in the usual mankind? Don’t work up hypotheses; just look around you sense of that phrase. Revealed religion is one thing, revealed at what actually happens and (if you can survey history as legislation is another. The voice that let itself be heard on a whole) at what always has been happening. This is fact, Sinai on that great day did not proclaim this must have been part of the design, this must have been ‘I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, indepen- decreed or at least allowed by Wisdom’s plan. Providence dent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recom- never misses its goal: whatever actually happens must al- penses men in a future life according to their deeds.’ ways have been part of its design. As regards the human race This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism; and as a whole, what do we find if we actually look? Not a steady the universal religion of mankind, without which men are progress towards perfection! Rather, we see that the human neither virtuous nor capable of happiness, was not to be race as a whole slightly oscillates—that it has never taken revealed there. Actually, it couldn’t have been revealed there, a few steps forward without soon afterwards sliding back, for who would have been convinced of these eternal doctrines faster, to its previous position. Most nations of the earth of salvation by the voice of thunder and the sound of trum- spend many centuries at the same cultural level, in a twilight pets? Surely not the unthinking animal-man who hadn’t that seems much too dim for our pampered eyes. Now and thought his way through to the existence of an invisible then a dot blazes up in the midst of the great mass, becomes being that governs the visible. The miraculous voice wouldn’t a glittering star, and follows an orbit—short in some cases, have given him any concepts, so it wouldn’t have convinced longer in others—that brings it back to its starting point, •him—let alone •the sophist, whose ears are buzzing with so or not far from it. Individual man advances, but mankind many doubts and ruminations that he can’t hear the voice continually fluctuates within fixed limits, while maintaining of common sense any more. He demands rational proofs, over-all about the same moral level in all periods—the same not miracles. And even if the teacher of religion raised from

38 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 7. More about revelation the dust all the dead who ever trod the earth, in order to I shall give you.’ This is all a set of historical truths which establish an eternal truth, the sceptic would say: by their very nature •rest on historical evidence, •must be ‘The teacher has awakened many dead, but I don’t verified by authority and •can be confirmed by miracles. know any more about eternal truth than I did before. According to Judaism, miracles and extraordinary signs I do know now that someone can do and say extraor- are not evidence for or against eternal truths of reason. dinary things; but there may be several such beings, That’s why Scripture itself instructs us who aren’t ready to reveal themselves just yet. And all •to refuse a hearing to any prophet who teaches this ·raising-the-dead routine· is so far removed from or counsels things that are contrary to established the infinitely sublime idea of a unique and eternal truths, even if he supports his mission with miracles; Deity that rules the entire universe according to its and unlimited will, and detects men’s most secret thoughts •to condemn the performer of miracles to death if he in order to reward their deeds according to their tries to lead us astray into idolatry. merits, either here or in the hereafter! For miracles can only verify testimonies, support authorities, Anyone who didn’t already know this, anyone who wasn’t and confirm the credibility of witnesses and passers-on ·of saturated with these truths that are so indispensable to tradition·. But no testimonies or authorities can upset any human happiness, and ·therefore· wasn’t prepared to ap- established truth of reason, or put a doubtful one out of proach the holy mountain, might have been bowled over by reach of doubt and suspicion. the wonderful manifestations but he couldn’t have learned Although the right way to take this divine book that we anything from them. – No! All this was presupposed; perhaps have received through Moses is as a book of laws containing it was taught, explained, and placed beyond all doubt by ordinances, rules of life and prescriptions. But it’s well human reasoning during the days of preparation. And now known to include also a bottomless treasure of truths of the divine voice proclaimed: ‘I am the Eternal, your God, reason and religious doctrines, which are so intimately who brought you out of the land of Mizraim, delivered you connected with the laws that together they make up a single from slavery’ and so on. An historical truth, on which this entity. All laws •refer to eternal truths of reason, or •are people’s legislation was to be based, was to be revealed here, based on them, or •remind us of them and •arouse us to along with laws—commands and ordinances, not eternal ponder them; so that our rabbis rightly say that the laws religious truths. ‘I am the Eternal, your God, who made a and doctrines relate to one another as body relates to soul. covenant with your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I’ll return to this later. . . . The experience of many centuries promised to make of their seed a nation of my own. The time teaches that a large part of the human race has used this has finally come for this promise to be kept. To this end I divine law-book as a source of insight from which to derive rescued you from Egyptian slavery with unheard-of miracles •new ideas and •standards by which to correct old ones. and signs. I am your Redeemer, your Sovereign and King; I The more you search in it, the more amazed you’ll be by also make a covenant with you, and give you laws by which its depths of insight. Admittedly, at first glance the truth you are to live and become a happy nation in the land that appears there in its simplest attire, with no attempt to look

39 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 7. More about revelation important. Yet the closer you come to it, the more you by ideas of •good and •evil and therefore also by •hope and look at it in a pure, innocent, loving and longing way, the •fear. In contrast with that, belief and doubt, assent and more it will unfold before you its divine beauty, lightly veiled opposition, are determined not by our faculty of desire, by so as not to be profaned by vulgar and unholy eyes. But our wishes and longings, or by fear and hope, but by our all these excellent propositions are merely •presented to knowledge of truth and untruth. our understanding, •submitted for us to think about, and So ancient Judaism has no symbolic books, no articles not •forced on our belief. Among all the prescriptions and of faith. No-one has to swear to symbols or subscribe under ordinances of the Mosaic law, not a single one tells us what oath to certain articles of faith. Indeed, we have no concept to believe or not believe; they all tell us what to do or not do. of so-called ‘religious oaths’, and the spirit of true Judaism Faith isn’t commanded; the only commands it listens to are makes us hold them to be invalid. Maimonides was the those that reach it by way of conviction. All the divine law’s first to think of reducing the religion of his fathers to a commandments are addressed to man’s will, to his power to set of principles. He explained that this was in order that act. In fact, the word in the original language that is usually religion—like all other sciences [see Glossary]—would have its translated as ‘belief’ means in most cases trust, confidence, basic concepts from which all the others would be derived. firm reliance on pledge and promise. This thought that Maimonides merely happened to have gave •‘Abraham trusted in the Eternal and it was accounted rise to the thirteen articles of the Jewish catechism, to which to him for piety’ (Genesis 15:6); we owe the morning hymn Yigdal and some good writings by •The Israelites saw and ‘trusted in the Eternal and in Chisdai, Albo, and Abarbanell. These are the only results the his servant Moses’ (Exodus 14;31). ‘articles’ have had up to now. They haven’t yet been forged Whenever the topic is the eternal truths of reason, the talk into shackles of faith, thank God! •Chisdai disputes them is not of ‘believing’ but of understanding and knowing: and proposes changes; •Albo limits their number, wanting •‘In order that you may know that the Eternal to recognize only three basic principles—ones that are pretty is the true God, and there is none beside much like the ones that Herbert of Cherbury proposed for the Him’. . . (Deuteronomy 4:39).) catechism at a later date; and still others, especially •Lorja •‘Therefore, know and take it to heart that the Lord and his neo-Kabbalist disciples, aren’t willing to recognize alone is God, in heaven above and on the earth below, any fixed set of basic doctrines, and say: ‘In our doctrine and there is none else’ (again Deuteronomy 4:39). everything is basic.’ This debate was conducted as all such •‘Hear, 0 Israel, the Eternal, our God, is a unique controversies should be: with earnestness and zeal, but with- eternal being’! (Deuteronomy 6:4). out animosity and bitterness. And although Maimonides’s Nowhere does Scripture say: Believe, 0 Israel, and you will thirteen articles have been accepted by the greater part of the be blessed; do not doubt, 0 Israel, or this or that punishment ·Jewish· nation, I don’t know of anyone’s branding Albo as a will befall you.’ Commandment and prohibition, reward and heretic because he wanted to reduce their number and lead punishment are only for actions, acts of commission and them back to far more universal propositions of reason. In omission that are subject to a man’s will and are guided this respect, we haven’t yet forgotten the important dictum

40 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 8. Speaking versus writing of our sages: ‘Although this one loosens and that one binds, that the adherent of Judaism had to observe incessantly. both teach the words of the living God. . . . From the beginning it was explicitly forbidden to write more . . . . All human knowledge can indeed be reduced to a about the law than God had revealed to the nation through few basic concepts, which are laid down as the foundation; Moses. ‘What has been passed down orally’, say the rabbis, and the fewer they are, the more stable the structure will ‘you are not permitted to put in writing.’ It was with great be. But laws can’t be abridged. In them everything is basic; reluctance that the heads of the synagogue in later periods so we can rightly say: ‘To us all words of Scripture, all of gave permission—which had become necessary—to write God’s commandments and prohibitions, are basic.’ But if about the laws. They called this permission a ‘destruction’ you want to obtain their quintessence, listen to how Hillel of the law, and said with the Psalmist: ‘There is a time the Elder, that great teacher of the nation who lived before when, for the sake of the Eternal, the law must be destroyed.’ the destruction of the second Temple ·in 70 CE·, handled According to the original constitution, however, it was not this matter. A heathen said: ‘Rabbi, teach me the entire supposed to be like that. The ceremonial law itself is a law while I am standing on one foot!’ He had previously kind of living script, arousing the mind and heart, full of approached Samai with the same unreasonable request, and meaning, continuously inspiring thought, and providing had been dismissed contemptuously; but Hillel, renowned the occasion and opportunity for oral instruction. What for his unshakable calm and gentleness, said: ‘Son! Love a student did and saw being done from morning till night thy neighbour as thyself. This is the text of the law; all the •pointed to religious doctrines and convictions and •drove rest is commentary. Now go and study!’ him to follow his teacher, to watch him, to observe all his actions, and to get from this all the instruction that his talents made him capable of and that his conduct made 8. Speaking versus writing him worthy of. The spread of writings and books, which I have sketched the basic outlines of ancient, original Ju- have now been infinitely multiplied through the invention daism, as I conceive it to be: doctrines and laws, beliefs of the printing press, has entirely transformed man. The and actions. The doctrines •weren’t tied to words or written great upheaval in the whole system of human knowledge and characters that are the same for all men at all times, amid beliefs that it has produced does indeed have some effects all the revolutions of language, Sitten [see Glossary], manners, that are good for the improvement of mankind, and we can’t and conditions; if they •were, we would be presented with thank beneficent Providence enough for them. But it has rigid forms into which we couldn’t force our concepts without been like every good that can come to man here below in disfiguring them. The doctrines were entrusted to living, also having many bad upshots—some because of misuse spiritual instruction that can keep in step with all changes of ·of the benefits of printing· but also some because of the time and circumstances, and can be varied and shaped to fit necessary condition of human nature. We teach and instruct a pupil’s needs, ability, and power of comprehension. ·The one another only through writings; we learn to know nature demand for· this one-on-one kind of instruction was found and man only from writings. We work and relax, edify and in •the written book of the law and in •the ceremonial acts amuse ourselves through scribbling. The preacher doesn’t

41 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 9. Abstraction and signs talk to his congregation; he reads or recites to it something to sound him out so to speak, if he wanted to satisfy his he has written. The teacher reads his written lectures from thirst for knowledge. To be clear about how this affected the podium. Everything is dead letter; the spirit of living religion and morals, I must again permit myself a digression; conversation has vanished. We express our love and anger my subject-matter borders on so many others that I can’t in letters, quarrel and become reconciled in letters; all our always keep to the main road, avoiding detours. But I’ll soon personal relations are by correspondence; and when we get get back on track. [He will do so at the start of subsection 15 on together, we know of no other entertainment than playing or page 50.] reading aloud. This has brought it about that man has almost lost his 9. Abstraction and signs value for his fellow-man. We don’t try to meet with the wise man because we find his wisdom in ·his· writings. If we think The cultural changes in written characters throughout the he still hasn’t published enough, all we do is encourage him centuries seem to me to have played a very important part to write. Grey-bearded age is no longer venerable because in the revolutions of human knowledge in general and in the smooth-chinned youth knows more from books than the versions of men’s opinions and ideas about religious the old man knows from experience. Understands it or matters—perhaps not produce them unaided, but at least co- misunderstands it? It doesn’t matter! It’s enough that he operated in a remarkable way with other contributing causes. knows it, has it on the tip of his tongue and can off-load When a man stops being satisfied with the first impressions it more boldly than can the honest old man who may have of the external senses (and what man can remain content the ideas rather than the words at his command. We no with them for long?), feeling the urge implanted in his soul to longer understand how the prophet could have thought it form concepts out of these external impressions, he becomes such a shocking evil for a youth to look down on an old man, aware that he has to attach them to perceptible signs—not or how a certain Greek could prophesy the downfall of the only so as •to communicate them to others but also so as •to state because a mischievous youngster had made fun of an hold fast to them himself and have them available for further old man in public. We don’t need the man of experience; we consideration when needed. His first steps towards sifting need only his writings. In short, we are literati, men of letters. out the general characteristics of things are ones that he can Our whole being depends on letters; and we can scarcely and indeed must take without help from signs. ·Must? Yes·: comprehend how a mortal man can, bookless, educate and even now all new abstract concepts must still be formed perfect himself. without the help of signs, and are given names only later In ancient times things were different—perhaps not better, on. It’s our power of attention that we must use to separate but different. . . . Man was more necessary to man; teaching the common characteristic from the fabric into which it is was more closely connected with life, contemplation more interwoven and to make it prominent. We’re helped in this intimately bound up with action. The beginner had to follow from two sides: •the objective power of the impression this in the footsteps of the experienced man, the student in those characteristic can make on us, and •the subjective interest of his teacher; he had to seek his company, to observe him, we have in it. But the soul has to put in some effort thus to

42 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 9. Abstraction and signs make the common characteristic separate and conspicuous; back to a universal law of nature, and weren’t compelled and it doesn’t take long for the light that our attentiveness to attribute a special arbitrary cause to every trick. (·In has focused on this point of the object to disappear again, saying ‘they didn’t yet have clear knowledge’ etc. I wasn’t and then the object sinks back into the whole mass with condescending·. How far does our own knowledge of this which it is united, and is lost in the shadows. The soul won’t subject extend today? Scarcely one step further, because get far if this effort has to be continued for some time and we know very little about the nature of light itself and about to be repeated often. It has begun to set things apart, but its component parts.) This is also true of the more recent it can’t ·yet· think. What should it be advised to do? – Wise discovery that air has weight. Even though we can’t explain Providence has placed within the soul’s immediate reach a weight itself, we can at least relate the observation that means that is always available, namely fluids will rise in airtight tubes to the universal law of gravity linking the abstracted characteristic to a perceptible which at first glance is all about making them sink. We can’t sign which, whenever it is seen or heard, recalls explain sinking, but we can understand how in this case and illuminates this characteristic in its pure and it must also have caused a rising; and this is another step unalloyed form. The ‘link’ is an association of ideas, forward in knowledge. So we shouldn’t rush to declare a and can be either natural or chosen. scientific term an empty sound if it can’t be derived from prior It’s well known that this is how human languages origi- elementary concepts. If it denotes a universal property of nated, with natural and arbitrary signs. Without these, things in its true extent, that’s enough. The term fuga vacui man wouldn’t be very different from the irrational animals, [Latin, ‘flight from a vacuum’, more often expressed as ‘abhorrence of a because without the aid of signs he can take barely one vacuum’] wouldn’t have been objectionable if it hadn’t gone step away from the sensual [i.e. away from having a mental life that beyond what is observed; cases were found where nature consists solely in sensory intakes]. doesn’t rush to fill a vacuum immediately; so the term had Those first steps that must have been taken towards to be rejected, not as empty but as incorrect. – Thus, the rational knowledge are still being taken today when the terms ‘cohesion of bodies’ and ‘general gravitation’ are still sciences are expanded and enriched by inventions; that’s of great importance in the sciences, although we still don’t why the invention of a new scientific term is sometimes very know how to derive them from prior fundamental concepts. important. The man who first invented the word ‘nature’ Before Haller discovered the law of irritability [i.e. of actively doesn’t seem to have made much of a discovery; but his responding to physical stimuli], many an observer will have no- contemporaries were indebted to him for enabling them to ticed the phenomenon itself in the organic nature of living •expose the stage ‘magician’ who showed them an apparition creatures. But it vanished in an instant, and didn’t stand out in the air, and •to tell him that his trick was nothing super- from the surrounding phenomena strongly enough to hold natural but ‘an effect of nature’. Granted, they didn’t yet the observer’s attention. Whenever he—·i.e. the pre-Haller have clear knowledge of the properties of refracted light rays observer·—noticed it again, he •saw it as an isolated natural and how they can be used to produce an image in the air, but event, and •couldn’t be reminded of the multitude of cases they at least knew they could refer a particular phenomenon in which he had noticed the same thing before. So it was

43 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 10. The invention of alphabets quickly lost again, like its predecessors, leaving no distinct impression that this thing makes on us •will draw our memory in the soul. Haller alone succeeded in •lifting this attention chiefly to this distinctive feature, •will arouse the phenomenon out of its context, •perceiving its universality idea of it, and •can therefore serve very well to designate it. In and •giving it a verbal label; and now he has put our attention this way the lion may have become a sign of courage, the dog on the alert, and we know to relate individual instances of it a sign of faithfulness, the peacock a sign of proud beauty; to a universal law of nature. and that’s what was going on when the first physicians Thus, labels for concepts are doubly necessary: (i) as carried live snakes with them—as a sign that they knew how vessels, so to speak, in which to preserve the concepts to make harmful things harmless. and keep them near at hand for our own use; and (ii) as In the course of time, it may have been found more enabling us to communicate our thoughts to others. When convenient we want (ii) to communicate our thoughts to others, the to use images of the things (either three- or two- concepts are already present in the soul, and we have only dimensional) rather than the things themselves; to produce the signs by which they are denoted and made then later perceptible to our fellow-men. But that’s not what happens for the sake of brevity to make use of outlines; within ourselves. If at a later time I want to (i) reawaken and after that an abstract concept in my soul, recalling to my mind by to let a part of the outline stand for the whole; means of its label, the label must present itself of its own and then finally accord and not wait to be summoned by my will—because it to compose out of heterogeneous parts a whole that already presupposes the idea that I want to recall. [The point •didn’t look like anything in particular but •was mean- Mendelssohnis making here is this: I can’t command my mind to come ingful. up the right label for (say) carbon, as an aid to thinking in general terms This system of labelling is called hieroglyphics, ·and each about carbon, because the command would have to be ‘Produce the label meaningful unit in such a system is called a hieroglyph·. for carbon’, and if I can issue that command I am already thinking in You can see that all this could have developed quite natu- general terms about carbon.] Visible signs are best for (i) because rally; but the switch from hieroglyphics to our alphabetical they are permanent, and don’t have to be reproduced every writing seems to have required a leap, and the leap seems to time we use them. Sounds or audible signs are best for (ii), have required more than ordinary human powers. ·for obvious reasons of convenience·. Some people think that our alphabetical writing consists merely of signs of sounds, and can be applied to things 10. The invention of alphabets and concepts only through sounds, but there is no basis for that. For those of us who have a more lively conception The first visible signs that men used to designate their of audible signs, the route from •written word to •thing abstract concepts were presumably the things themselves. runs through •speech; but there’s no necessity about this. Since everything in nature has some characteristic of its To a congenitally deaf person, written words immediately own that distinguishes it from everything else, the sense- designate things; and if he ever became able to hear, written

44 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 10. The invention of alphabets signs would first bring to his mind the things immediately to discover the traces one had to follow in order to perceive connected with them, and then through those things the the ‘regions’ in which the immeasurable horde of human corresponding sounds. What I see as the real difficulty in concepts were to be contained; and then it won’t have been the move from hieroglyphics to alphabet was this: without so difficult to re-apply the procedure to written characters, preparation and without being pushed into it, they had carving them up into classes. So I think that a people born to conceive a plan for using a •few elementary signs and deaf would have needed greater inventive powers to get from their possible combinations to designate a •multitude of hieroglyphics to alphabetical writing; because with written concepts—a multitude that couldn’t be brought together by characters it’s harder to see that they have a graspable range being surveyed or by falling into classes. and can be divided into classes. Here again the understanding had some guidance in I use the word ‘classes’ whenever I’m talking about the the path it had to follow. After often transforming writing elements of audible languages; for even today, in our living, into speech and speech into writing, and thus comparing developed languages, writing is nowhere near as variegated audible and visible signs, they must soon have noticed that as speech: a single written sign is read and pronounced the sounds recurring in the spoken language match the differently in different combinations and positions. Yet it recurring parts in different hieroglyphs—in each case the re- is evident that our frequent use of writing has levelled out currences involve different combinations, by means of which the differences of tone and pitch in our spoken languages, the words or hieroglyphs multiply their meanings. They must and our obedience to the rules and requirements of written eventually have realized •that producible and perceptible language has made our spoken language more elementary. sounds are nowhere near as numerous as the things denoted (For this reason, nations that don’t have writing have much by them, and •that they could easily round up the entire more diversity in their spoken language, and many of the range of all perceptible sounds and divide it into classes. sounds in these languages are so indeterminate that we can’t And this initially incomplete division could be extended come close to matching them in writing.) In the beginning, and steadily improved, eventually assigning to each class therefore, they had to take things clumps, designating a a corresponding hieroglyph. Even this ·still-hieroglyphic multitude of similar sounds by a single written character. As written system· was one of the noblest discoveries of the time went on, however, finer distinctions were perceived, and human spirit. We can at least see from it how men may more letters were invented to designate them. Our alphabet have been led gradually, with no flight of inventiveness, to was borrowed from some kind of hieroglyphic writing; you think of the immeasurable as measurable—as though they can see this still, in most of the shapes and names of the 9 were dividing the starry firmament into regions and thus letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which was, as history clearly assigning to every star its place, without knowing how many shows, the source of all other known ways of writing. It was stars there are! It was easier with audible signs, I think, a Phoenician who taught the Greeks how to write. 9 [Mendelssohn has a footnote here in which 14 Hebrew letters appear, each paired with a general word: Aleph with Rind = ‘ox’, Bet with Haus = ‘house’, Gimel with Kamel = ‘camel’, and so on. It isn’t practicable to present the Hebrew letters here. It is in any case extremely unclear what this footnote is supposed to show.]

45 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 12. How idolatry began

11. Uses and misuses of language Schrift genommen werden konnten—‘couldn’t be taken for writing’—but this must have been a slip.] But this enigmatic and strange All these different kinds of writing and designating must character of the composition itself provided •superstition also have had different effects on the progress and improve- with material for all sorts of fictions and fables. (ii) Misuse: ment of concepts, opinions, and knowledge. On the one Hypocrisy and willful misuse busily provided •it with tales hand there were changes for the better: the observations, that it wasn’t clever enough to invent. Anyone who had ever experiments, and reflections in astronomy, economics, and acquired importance and authority wanted. . . .to preserve moral and religious matters were multiplied, propagated, them. Anyone who had ever given a satisfying answer to a facilitated, and preserved for posterity. These are the cells question never wanted to be remiss in his responses. There’s in which the bees collect their honey, saving it for their no nonsense so absurd, no farce so farcical, that it won’t own enjoyment and that of others. – But it always happens be resorted to; no fable so foolish that a credulous person in human affairs that what wisdom builds up here folly won’t be urged to believe it; merely so as to be ready with a tries to tear down there, using the very same means and Because. . . for every Why?. [That goes even better in German: with tools. What should have been an improvement of man’s a Darum for every Warum?.] The answer I don’t know sticks in a condition was turned into corruption and deterioration, this man’s throat once he has claimed to be very well informed (if being done by (i) misunderstanding and by (ii) misuse. What not to know everything), especially when his rank, office, and had been simplicity and ignorance now became corruption dignity seem to demand that he should know. Many a man’s and error. (i) Misunderstanding: the mob had little if any heart must pound when he is at the point of either •losing instruction in the notions that were to be associated with importance and authority or •becoming a traitor to truth. these perceptible signs. They saw the signs not as mere And few have the intelligence to follow Socrates in saying at signs ·of things· but rather as the things themselves. Back the outset ‘I know nothing’, even when they do know a little when they were still using the things themselves or their more than the next man; so as to make it less embarrassing images and outlines, instead of ·conventional· signs, this and humiliating if later on ‘I don’t know’ becomes necessary. was an easy mistake to make. The things had a reality of their own, in addition to the meaning that was being given 12. How idolatry began to them. A coin was, ·as well as being a signifier·, also a piece of merchandise with its own use and utility; so an We can see how this could have given rise to •the worship ignorant person could easily misjudge and wrongly specify its of animals and images, •the worship of idols and human value as a coin. Hieroglyphic script. . . .didn’t encourage this beings, •fables and fairy tales. I don’t present this as the error as much as the outlines did, because each hieroglyph only source of mythology, but I think it may have contributed was composed of heterogeneous and mis-matched parts, greatly to the origin and propagation of all these inanities. misshapen and preposterous figures that had no existence Especially, it will help to explain something that Christoph of their own in nature and therefore, you’d think, couldn’t Meiners says somewhere in his writings, namely that among be taken for anything but writing. [Mendelssohn wrote nicht für the original nations—i.e. the ones that formed themselves

46 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 13. How to think about a foreign religion and don’t owe their culture to any other nation—the worship as a way of referring to the attributes of the beings they of animals was more in vogue than the worship of men, and thought most worthy of worship—referring to them and that inanimate objects were deified and worshipped more making them perceptible. They needed to relate the highly readily than human beings were. I’ll assume that he is right abstract concepts ·of those •attributes· to perceptible things about this, leaving the verification of it to the philosophic with no ambiguity in them, and that must be what led them historians. What I’ll try to do is to explain it! to choose images of animals or of composites made up of If men want to use the things themselves or their images several animals. This was an innocent thing, a mere writing and outlines as signs of ideas, they can’t find, as signs of style; but we have seen how quickly it degenerated in the moral qualities, anything more convenient and meaningful hands of man, becoming idolatry. So it was natural for all than animals. Why? For the same reason that my friend primitive idolatry to be more animal-worship than worship Lessing gave, in his treatise on fables, to explain why Aesop of man. Men flatly couldn’t be used to designate divine chose animals to be the actors in his fables. Every animal attributes; their deification must have come from an entirely has its definite, distinctive character, and this can be seen in different source. What happened must have been something it at first glance, because its features as a whole largely point like this: to this special mark of distinction. This animal is agile, that Heroes and conquerors—or sages, lawgivers, and one sharp-sighted; this one is strong, that one is calm; this prophets—arrived from some happier region of the one is faithful and obedient to man, that one is treacherous world, one that had been educated earlier; they distin- or loves freedom, etc. . . . At first glance, man doesn’t tell guished themselves so greatly through extraordinary you anything, or rather he tells you everything. He isn’t talents, and showed themselves to be so exalted, that completely lacking in any of these qualities, and the degree they were revered as messengers of the Deity or as the to which he has each isn’t immediate clear on his surface. Deity itself. So his distinctive character doesn’t strike the eye; and for It’s easy to believe that this was more likely to happen in the designation of moral ideas and qualities he is the least nations that owed their culture not to themselves but to suitable thing in nature! others, for a prophet seldom acquires extraordinary authority Even today, the characters of the gods and heroes can’t in his own country—as they say. Meiners’s remark [see the first be better indicated in the plastic arts than through the paragraph of this subsection] would thus be a sort of confirmation animal or inanimate images associated with them. ·Even· of my hypothesis that idolatry first arose from the need for if a Minerva and a Juno already look different from one written characters. another, they are far better distinguished by the animal characteristics that are given to them. The poet, too, if he 13. How to think about a foreign religion wants to speak of moral qualities in metaphors and allegories, usually brings in animals. Lion, tiger, eagle, ox, fox, dog, In judging the religious ideas of a nation that we don’t know bear, worm, dove—they all speak, and the meaning leaps anything else about, we must take care not to see everything to the eye. So they tried to use such animal characteristics through our own home-grown eyes, so that we don’t identify

47 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 13. How to think about a foreign religion as idolatry something that may really be merely writing. with an image of divine providence and prevailing grace Imagine this course of events: [Background to this indented they interpreted it according to their customs and took it to passage: A follower of Rousseau founded the ‘Temple of Providence‘ be meant as an image of the Deity, or as the Deity itself; which was to serve the cause of natural religion. That was in Dessau, they were delighted with their discovery! In the same way, where he also founded a school, the ‘Philanthropinum’.] readers today laugh at the Indian philosophers who say that this universe is borne by elephants, place the elephants on a A Polynesian islander who knows nothing of the secret large turtle, which they maintain is upheld by an enormous art of writing, and hasn’t been gradually introduced bear, which in turn rests on an immense serpent. Perhaps to our ideas, is suddenly removed from his part of the good people haven’t thought to ask what the immense the world to one of the most image-free temples of serpent rests on! [Mendelssohn means that last sentence to express Europe; and to make the example more striking, let the condescending, slightly sneering attitude of people who hear about it be the Temple of Providence. He ﬁnds everything the pile-up of animals but don’t actually know what it was all about.] empty of images and ornaments; but there on the white wall he sees some black lines,10 which he at Now read for yourselves in the Shasta of the Gentoos the ﬁrst thinks might have put there by chance. But no! passage describing a symbol of this kind which probably All the members of the congregation look at these gave rise to this legend. I take it from the Reports from lines with reverence, fold their hands and direct their Bengal and the Empire of Hindustan by J. Z. Hollwell, who adoration to them. Our Polynesian is now suddenly had been instructed in the holy books of the Gentoos and whisked back to his home island, where he reports to could see with the eyes of a native Brahmin. [The passage his curious fellow-countrymen on the religious ideas that Mendelssohn quotes is fairly long; it does include the of the Philanthropinum in Dessau. pile-up of animals in a manner that seems different from—or at least more complex and deeply meaningful than—the story Won’t they mock and pity the dull superstition of their that westerners sneer at. Exactly how this legend is meant fellow-men who have sunk so low as to offer divine worship to work is extremely unclear, and we can spare ourselves the to black lines on a white surface? – Our own travelers details.] may often make similar mistakes when telling us about the religion of distant peoples. Before he can say with certainty All this can be found depicted in images, and it’s easy to whether •a nation’s images are still being used as script or see how easily such symbols and hieroglyphics could lead rather have degenerated into idolatry, the traveller has to outsiders into error. get intimate knowledge of •its thoughts and opinions. When We know that the history of mankind went through a the conquerors of Jerusalem plundered the Temple, they period, many centuries long, when real idolatry became the found the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, and took dominant religion nearly everywhere. The images lost their them to be idols of the Jews. They saw everything with the value as signs. The spirit of truth that was to have been eyes of barbarians, and from their own point of view. Faced preserved in them evaporated, leaving an empty vessel that 10 The words: ‘God, all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, rewards the good.’

48 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 14. The failed Pythagorean attempt was transformed into a pernicious poison. The concepts of true simplicity he isn’t satisfied. When he understands deity that still survived in the folk religions were so distorted an explanation, he soon comes to regard it as boring and by superstition, so corrupted by hypocrisy and priest-craft, contemptible, and he continues the hunt for new, mysterious, that there was reason to suspect that atheism might be less inexplicable things that he takes to heart with enormous harmful to human happiness—that godlessness might be pleasure. . . . So public instruction didn’t get a hearing from less ungodly (so to speak) than such a religion. Men, animals, the populace: it met with obstinate resistance by the forces plants, the nastiest and most contemptible things in nature of superstition and hypocrisy, and received its usual wages— were worshipped and revered as deities, or rather feared as •contempt or •hatred and persecution. Some of the secret deities. For the recognised folk religions of those times had devices and procedures by which the rights of truth were no idea of the Deity except that of a dreadful being, more to have been upheld also went down the road of corruption, powerful than us earth-dwellers, easily provoked to anger and became nurseries for every superstition, every vice, and and hard to make peace with. To the shame of the human every abomination. – A certain school of philosophers [the intellect and heart, superstition knew how to combine the Pythagoreans] had the bold idea of distancing men’s abstract most incompatible ideas, permitting •human sacrifice and concepts from everything pictorial or image-like, attaching •animal worship to exist side by side. In the most magnificent them instead to written signs that couldn’t be taken for temples, constructed and decorated according to all the rules something else—namely, to numerals. Because numerals of art, if you •looked. . . .for the deity worshipped there you in themselves don’t represent anything, and aren’t naturally would find on the altar a hideous long-tailed monkey; and related to any sense impressions, you’d think they couldn’t youths and maidens in their prime were slaughtered for be misinterpreted ·in the way the animal images had been·; this monster. That’s how far down human nature had been they would have to be •taken to be arbitrary written signs dragged by idolatry! Men were slaughtered—I’m adopting the of concepts or else •dismissed as unintelligible. Here, you prophet Hosea’s emphatic antithesis—Men were slaughtered would think, not even the rawest intellect could confuse signs as sacrifices to the cattle that were worshipped. with things, and this subtle device would prevent every abuse. To anyone who doesn’t understand numerals, they are empty shapes; people who aren’t enlightened by them at least won’t 14. The failed Pythagorean attempt be led astray. [In this paragraph, ‘numeral’ translates Zahl, whose Philosophers sometimes dared •to oppose the universal dominant meaning is ‘number’. But it’s clear that Mendelssohn’s topic depravity and—openly or by secret devices—•to purify and is a certain kind of meaningful sign, i.e. numerals, not numbers. In the enlighten concepts. They aimed to restore to the images their next paragraph, the first Zahl is ‘numeral’, but the second has to be old meaning, or to give them a new one, thereby putting the translated as ‘numbers’ because the central Pythagorean doctrine was soul back into a dead body, as it were. But in vain! The about numbers, not numerals. Mendelssohn wasn’t the first or the last philosophers’ rational explanations had no influence on the to tend to smudge that distinction.] folk religion. The uneducated man seems to be eager to That may be how the great founder of this school, get explanations, but when they are given to him in their ·Pythagoras·, saw the matter. But even in this school it didn’t

49 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 15. The purpose of Jewish ceremonial law take long for folly to start up in the usual way. Dissatisfied ideas among the nations, doing this by means of its mere with what was so intelligible, so graspable, they looked for •a existence, as it were. They lived under extreme pressure secret power in the numerals themselves, for •an inexplicable among barbarians and idolaters; and •misery had made reality in the signs, depriving them of their value as signs. them nearly as insensitive to the truth as •arrogance had They believed, or at least made others believe, that all the made their oppressors. God liberated them from this state of mysteries of nature and of the Deity were concealed in these slavery by extraordinary miracles; he became the Redeemer, numbers; they were credited with miraculous power, and to Leader, King, Lawgiver, and Judge of this nation that he be the means to satisfying not only had fashioned, and he designed its entire constitution so •men’s curiosity and eagerness for knowledge, but also as to fit in with the wise purposes of his providence. Weak •their vanity, and shortsighted is the eye of man! Who can say: ‘I have •their striving for high and unattainable things, entered God’s sanctuary, seen the whole of his plan, and can •their meddlesome curiosity, determine the measure, goal, and limits of his purposes’? •their greed, But it’s all right for the modest searcher to form conjectures •their meanness, and and draw conclusions from them, so long as he always •their madness. remembers that surmising is all that he can do. In short, a word, folly had yet again •frustrated wisdom’s We have seen how hard it is to preserve the abstract ideas plans and •again annihilated—or even perverted for its own of religion among men by means of permanent signs. Images use—what wisdom had provided for a better purpose. and hieroglyphics lead to superstition and idolatry, and our alphabetical script makes man too speculative—·or, more 15. The purpose of Jewish ceremonial law exactly, it makes it too easy and tempting for people to come up with glib theories·. It displays the symbolic knowledge And now—·picking up the thread dropped at the end of of things and their relations too openly and superficially; it subsection 8 on page 42·—I am in a better position to explain spares us the effort of probing and searching, and puts my surmise about what the ceremonial law in Judaism was doctrine out of touch with life. It was to remedy these for. – Our nation’s founding fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and defects that the lawgiver of this nation gave the ceremonial Jacob—remained faithful to the Eternal, and tried bring it law. Religious and moral teachings were to be connected about that their families and descendants would have pure with men’s everyday doings and not-doings. The law didn’t religious concepts, free from all idolatry. And then their de- require them to engage in reflection; it prescribed only scendants were chosen by Providence to be a priestly nation, behaviour, only doings and not-doings. The great maxim of i.e. a nation that would continually call attention to sound this constitution seems to have been: Men must be impelled and unadulterated ideas of God and his attributes, doing this to perform actions and only induced to engage in reflection. through its internal arrangements and its constitution, and Therefore, each of these prescribed actions, each practice, through its laws, actions, ups and downs, and changes. It each ceremony had its meaning, its genuine significance, was incessantly to teach, proclaim, and try to preserve these which •was precisely fitted to the theoretical knowledge of

50 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 15. The purpose of Jewish ceremonial law religion and the teachings of morality, and •would lead a •teaching and life, man in search of truth to reflect on these sacred matters •wisdom and activity, or to seek instruction from wise men. The truths useful •theorising and sociability. for the happiness of the nation and of each of its members Well, anyway, it was the initial plan and purpose of the were to be utterly removed from all imagery—because this lawgiver that such connections were to exist. But the ways was the governing purpose and basic law of the constitution. of God are inscrutable! With this system—as with animal The truths in question were to be connected with actions images, hieroglyphics and so on—after a short period things and practices, which were to play the part of signs of them started down the road of corruption. It was not long before (without signs they can’t be preserved). Men’s actions are this brilliant circle had been completed, and matters again transitory; there’s nothing lasting about them; and that returned to a point not far from the low level from which they protects them from leading to idolatry through abuse or had emerged as, alas! has been evident for many centuries. misunderstanding, in the way that ·durable· hieroglyphic [‘The “brilliant circle” is the period of ·Jewish· statehood’ (A. Altmann, in script did. And men’s actions also have an advantage over the Brandeis U.P. edition of this work, p. 227).] alphabetical signs, namely that they don’t isolate man, don’t In the first days after the miraculous law-giving, the na- turn him into a solitary creature brooding over writings tion relapsed—already!—into the sinful folly of the Egyptians, and books. Instead, they drive him to social exchanges, to and clamoured for an animal-image. By their own account imitation, and to living instructions given by voice. That’s they didn’t want to worship it as a deity. If they had wanted why there were only a few written laws, and even these that, ·Aaron· the high priest and brother of ·Moses· the couldn’t be entirely understood without oral instruction law-giver would have forbidden it, even at the risk of his and tradition; and it was forbidden to go on writing about own life. – All they were asking for was a god-like being them. But the •unwritten laws—the oral tradition, the living who would lead them, taking the place of Moses whom they instruction from man to man, from mouth to heart—were believed to have deserted his post. Aaron couldn’t go on to explain, enlarge, limit, and define more precisely things resisting the people’s pressure; he moulded them a calf, that had wisely been left undetermined in the written law. and he cried out Tomorrow we’ll have a feast in honour of In everything a youth saw being done in all public as well as the Eternal!, wanting to hold them to their resolution to private dealings, on all gates and doorposts, in whatever he offer divine worship not to that image but to the Eternal turned his eyes or ears to, he was prompted to •inquire and alone. But on the feast-day, the dancing and banqueting reflect, to •follow in the footsteps of an older and wiser man, rabble uttered quite different words: These are your gods, observing his minutest actions and doings with childlike Israel, who have brought you out of Egypt! With that, the attentiveness and imitating them with childlike docility, to fundamental law was transgressed, the bond of the nation •inquire into the spirit and purpose of those doings, and to was dissolved. When an excited mob has become chaotic, •seek such instruction as his master thought he was able it’s not likely that they can be brought around by reasonable and willing to receive. Thus an intimate connection was reproaches; and we know what hard measures the divine established between law-giver had to adopt to restore the rebellious rabble to

51 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 16. God’s power, God’s love

obedience. [He ordered Moses to •sort out the people who had not times, you won’t find any trace of •its having credited any of rebelled (they turned out to be ‘the sons of Levi’), and to •order them to its deities with having love and mercy towards the children of put all the others to the sword; three thousand men were killed (Exodus man. Writing about ·Athens·, the wisest of the Greek states, 32:27–8).] Still, we should notice and admire the way God’s Christoph Meiners says: Providence knew how to take this wretched event and turn ‘Both the people and most of their bravest generals it to entirely worthy purposes. and wisest statesmen surely regarded the gods they worshipped as being more powerful than men, but 16. God’s power, God’s love also as sharing in men’s needs, passions, weaknesses, and even vices. – To the Athenians and the other I have mentioned that paganism had a more tolerable con- Greeks, all gods appeared to be so malicious that • • ception of God’s power than of his goodness. The common any extraordinary or long-lasting good fortune would man regards goodness and proneness to reconciliation as attract the anger and disfavour of the gods and would weakness. He envies everyone the least pre-eminence in be upset by their devices. And they considered these power, wealth, beauty, honour, etc., but not pre-eminence gods to be so touchy that they saw all misfortunes could in goodness. And how he envy goodness, given that it as divine punishments—not for a general depravity is mostly up to him whether he has the degree of gentleness of morals, or for individual great crimes, but because that would make him good? [Mendelssohn writes ‘. . . den er of trivial (and usually unintentional) failures in the beneidenswerth findet’ = ‘. . . that he finds enviable’—obviously a slip.] If performance of certain rites and ceremonies.’11 we’re to grasp that hatred and vengefulness, envy and cruelty are basically nothing but weakness, miserable effects of fear, Homer himself, that gentle and loving soul, didn’t have the we have to think. Fear, combined with superiority that •is glowing thought that the gods forgive out of love, and that produced by circumstances and •can’t be relied on, is the without benevolence they wouldn’t be happy in their heavenly mother of all these barbaric frames of mind. Fear alone home. makes us cruel and implacable. Someone who is conscious And now we can see how wisely the law-giver of the of his superiority and sure of retaining it finds much greater Israelites made use of their terrible offence against ·God’s· happiness in indulgence and pardon. majesty in order to teach •the human race this important When you have seen this, you can’t any longer hesitate doctrine, opening up to •it a source of consolation from which to •regard love as being at least as sublime a pre-eminence our souls draw refreshment still today. – What sublime as power, to •credit the supreme being with being not only and terrifying preparation! The revolt had been subdued, all-powerful but also all-good, and to •recognize the God of the sinners had been made to recognize their punishable might also as the God of love. But what a distance there offence, the nation was in dismay, and God’s messenger, was between •paganism and this refinement! In all •its Moses himself, had almost lost heart: ‘0 Lord, as long as theology, in all the poems and other testimonies of earlier your displeasure is not allayed, don’t let us leave this place. 11 History of the Sciences in Greece and Rome, vol. 2.

52 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 17. God’s punishments

For how will it be known that I and your nation have found 17. God’s punishments favour in your eyes? Isn’t it when you go with us? Only then shall we, I and your nation, be distinguished from all others [Biblical passages in this section and the next follow Mendelssohn’s Ger- on the face of the earth.’ man with some inﬂuence from the latest English translation of Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible.] God: I shall comply with your request, because you have It’s true that the Eternal says he will allow nothing to go found grace in my eyes and I have singled you out by name unpunished, and these words have famously given rise to as the one favoured by me. all sorts of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. But when they are understood so that they don’t completely Moses: Encouraged by these comforting words, I dare to cancel what was said before, they lead directly to the great make a still bolder request! 0 Lord, let me behold your glory! thought that our rabbis discovered in them, namely: the fact that for man nothing is allowed to go entirely unpunished is God: I shall let all my goodness pass before you, and. . . .shall a quality of divine love. let you know in what way I am gracious to those to whom I A venerable friend with whom I once had a conversation am gracious, and merciful to those to whom I am merciful. – on religious matters asked me whether I wouldn’t wish to be You will see this appearance of me from behind; for my face assured by a direct revelation that I would not be miserable can’t be seen.12 in the future. We both agreed that I didn’t have to fear eternal punishment in hell, for God can’t let any of his With that, the appearance of God passed before Moses, and creatures suffer unceasing misery. And no creature can a voice was heard: ‘The Lord is, was and will be act in such a way as to deserve the punishment of being eternally miserable. As for the hypothesis that •the eternal being, all-powerful, all-merciful and all- the punishment for sin must be proportionate to gracious; the offended majesty of God, and must therefore be •long-suffering, kind and true; he will inﬁnite, •preserve his lovingkindness down to the thousandth my friend had given this up long ago, as many great men of generation; he his church had likewise done—and we had no more dispute •forgives transgression, sin and rebellion, yet about that. The semi-legitimate concept of duties to God has •allows nothing to go unpunished.’ given rise to the equally wobbly concept of offence against What man’s feelings are so hardened that he can read God’s majesty; and the latter, understood in a literal way, this with dry eyes? – Whose heart is so inhuman that has led to the inadmissible idea of the eternalness of punish- after reading this he can still hate his brother and remain ment in hell—an idea the misuse of which has made about as unreconciled with him? many men •actually miserable in this life as it •theoretically 12 What a great thought! You want to see all my glory; I will let my goodness pass before you. – You will see it from behind. From the front it is not visible to mortal eyes.

53 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 17. God’s punishments makes unhappy in the next! My philosophical friend agreed saw its workings and consequences in their true light. with me that God created man for man’s happiness, and ‘But’, replied my friend, ‘can’t God think it right to let a that he gave him laws for man’s happiness. If the slightest man suffer as an example to others? And isn’t it desirable to breach of these laws is to be punished in proportion to the be spared this exemplary punishment?’ lawgiver’s majesty and is therefore to result in eternal misery, ‘No’, I answered. ‘In God’s state no individual suffers God has given these laws to man for his perdition. Without merely for the benefit of others.’ If it were to happen, this these laws of such an infinitely exalted being, man wouldn’t sacrifice for the benefit of others must confer a higher moral have to become eternally miserable. Oh, if men could be less worth on the sufferer himself: having promoted so much miserable without divine laws, who doubts that God would good by his suffering must be an important contributor to have spared them the fire of his laws, since it must consume the growth of his own inner perfection. And if that’s how them so irretrievably? – This being stipulated, my friend’s thing stand, I can’t fear such a state of affairs, and I can’t question became more precise: wish for it to be revealed to me that I’ll never be placed ‘Don’t you wish to be assured by a revelation that in this situation of magnanimous benevolence that brings in the future life you will be exempt even from finite happiness to my fellow-creatures and myself. What I have misery?’ to fear is ·not punishment for my sins but· sin itself. If I do I answered: commit a sin, God’s punishment is a benefit to me, an effect ‘No. This misery must be a well-deserved punishment, of his infinite fatherly compassion. As soon as it ceases to and in God’s paternal household I will gladly undergo be a benefit to me—I’m sure of this—it will stop. Can I want the punishment I deserve.’ my Father to withdraw his chastising hand from me before ‘But what if the All-merciful was willing to remit man’s it has done what it was meant to do? If I ask God to let a well-deserved punishment’? transgression of mine go entirely unpunished, do I really He will certainly do so as soon as punishment is no longer know what I am requesting? Oh, surely it’s another quality needed for the improvement of man. I don’t need any direct of God’s infinite love that he allows no transgression of man revelation to be convinced of this. When I break God’s laws, to go entirely unpunished! – Surely the moral evil ·of that· makes me unhappy; and God’s justice, All-power is God’s alone; i.e. his all-wise love, seeks to guide me to moral improvement and love also is yours, 0 Lord! through my physical misery. As soon as this physical misery, when you treat everyone according to his deeds. the punishment for sin, is no longer needed for getting my (Psalm 62: 12–13) mind into order, my Father will remit the punishment—with no help from revelation. I’m as sure of this as I am that It was on this important occasion that the doctrine of God’s I exist. – And if this punishment still contributes to my mercy was first made known to the nation through Moses. moral improvement, I don’t want to be exempt from it in any The Psalmist says this explicitly in another place where he way. In the kingdom of this paternal ruler, the transgressor quotes from the writings of Moses the words that are my receives only the punishment he would want to suffer if he present topic:

54 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 18. A summary account of early Judaism

He showed His ways to Moses, rational consideration in the manner appropriate to eternal His deeds to the Israelites; truths. They couldn’t have been given by direct revelation in The Lord is compassionate and gracious words and scripts, because those are intelligible only here Patient and of great goodness. and now ·and so are useless as vehicles for eternal truths·. He will not contend for ever, The Supreme Being has revealed these truths to all rational or nurse his anger for all time. creatures through things and concepts and inscribed them He does not treat us according to our sins, in the soul with a script that is legible and comprehensible or punish us according to our iniquities. always and everywhere. For this reason our much-quoted As the heavens are high above the earth, poet sings: so does his love reign over those who revere him. As far as morning is from evening, The heavens declare the glory of God, so far does he remove our sins from us. and the sky proclaims his handiwork; As fathers have compassion on their children, one day gives this doctrine to the next, so does the Lord have compassion on those who and night gives instruction to night. revere Him. No teaching, no words, For he knows how we are formed; whose voices are not heard. he does not forget that we are dust. . . .etc. Their shout resounds over all the earth, (Psalm 103) their message goes out to the ends of the world, to the place where he has set a tent for the sun This entire psalm is enormously important. Readers who (Psalm 19) care would do well to read it all, carefully, and compare it with what I have been saying. . . . Their effect is as universal as the beneﬁcent inﬂuence of the sun, which, as it hurries through its orbit, sheds light and 18. A summary account of early Judaism warmth over the whole globe. . . . (2) Historical truths, i.e. records of the happenings of [In this subsection, all the occurrences of italics are Mendelssohn’s.] former ages, especially in the lives of the nation’s forefathers: Now I can summarize my conceptions of the Judaism of the •their coming to know the true God, early days, and bring them into a single focus. Judaism •their conduct in relation to God, consisted, or was intended by its founder to consist, of ·three •their transgressions and the fatherly punishment the elements·. received for them, (1) Religious doctrines and propositions, i.e. eternal •the covenant that God concluded with them, and truths about God and his government and providence, with- •the promise that he so often repeated to them to make out which man can’t be enlightened and happy. These aren’t a nation consecrated to him out of their descendants. forced on the nation’s faith under a threat of eternal or These historical records contained the basis for the nation’s temporal punishments; rather, they were recommended for holding together as a single nation; and it’s in their very

55 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 18. A summary account of early Judaism nature as historical truths that they can’t be accepted in connect action with contemplation, life with doctrine. It was any way except on faith. They get from authority all the to create personal converse and social contact between pupil evidentness that they need; ·but· they were also confirmed and teacher, inquirer and instructor, and to stimulate and to the nation by miracles, and supported by an authority encourage competitiveness the following of good examples. that was sufficient to place the faith beyond all doubt. It actually did this in the early period before the constitution (3) Laws, precepts, commandments and rules of life, degenerated and human folly again interfered to change, that were to be special to this nation, whose observance through misunderstanding and misdirection, the good into of them would bring happiness to the nation and also evil and the useful into the harmful. [The phrase ‘between pupil personally to each of its members. The lawgiver was God— and teacher’ involves reading Mendelssohn’s Schule = ‘school’ as a slip not •God as creator and preserver of the universe, but for Schüler = ‘pupil’.] •God as their ancestors’ protector and sworn friend, In this original constitution, state and religion weren’t as liberator, founder and leader, as king and head of conjoined—they were one. They weren’t connected, but this people identical. Man’s relation to society and his relation to God —and he gave •his laws the most solemn sanction, publicly coincided and could never come into conflict. God, the and in a wholly new and miraculous manner, through which creator and preserver of the world, was also the king and •they were imposed on the nation and all their descendants administrator of this nation; and his oneness is such that as an unalterable duty and obligation. there isn’t the slightest division or manyness in either the These laws were revealed, i.e. made known by God political or the metaphysical sense. And this administrator through words and script. Yet only the most essential of doesn’t have needs. Everything he demands from the nation them were entrusted to written words; and even these written serves its own welfare and advances the happiness of that laws are mostly incomprehensible (or at any rate they would state; just as the state couldn’t demand anything that •was inevitably become so in the course of time) if there weren’t opposed to its duties towards God—indeed, that •wasn’t also unwritten devices—viva voce instructions—to explain commanded by God, the lawgiver and supreme magistrate of and delimit them and make them more precise. That is the nation. In this nation, therefore, civil matters acquired because no words or written signs preserve their meaning a sacred and religious aspect, and every service to the state unchanged throughout a generation. was also a true service to God. The community was a The written as well as the unwritten laws, as prescriptions community of God, its affairs were God’s, state taxes were an for action and rules of life, have the ultimate aim of producing offering to God, and everything down to the smallest bit of public and private happiness. But they are also, in large crowd-control was service to God. The Levites, who lived off part, to be regarded as a kind of writing style, and they have the public revenue, received their livelihood from God. They significance and meaning as ceremonial laws. They guide the were to have no property in the land, for God is their property. inquiring intelligence to divine truths, partly to eternal truths Anyone who has to live somewhere else must serve foreign and partly to historical ones on which the religion of this peo- gods. This last statement occurs several times in Scripture, ple was based. The ceremonial law was the bond that was to but can’t be taken literally; basically it means only that

56 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 18. A summary account of early Judaism the expatriate is subject to alien political laws which, unlike they signed a death-sentence! Indeed, as the rabbis say, any those of his own country, are not also a part of the service to court that is concerned for its good name must see to it that God. in a period of seventy years not more than one person is The same can be said of crimes. Every sacrilege against sentenced to death. the authority of God, as the lawgiver of the nation, was high According to some people ecclesiastical law and ecclesi- treason and therefore a state crime. Whoever blasphemed astical power are authorized, and temporal punishments are against God was insulting the monarch; whoever desecrated to be inflicted for unbelief or wrong belief. What I have said the Sabbath was setting himself against a fundamental law up to here shows how little they must know of the Mosaic of civil society, for the establishment of this day was the basis law and the constitution of Judaism to believe this! The for an essential part of the constitution. Let the Sabbath be Searcher for Light and Right as well as Daniel Mörschel [see an eternal covenant between myself and the children of Israel above pages 31–32] are therefore far removed from the truth [see Glossary], said the Lord, a perpetual sign that in six days when they believe I have abolished Judaism by my rational the eternal. . . .etc’. Under this constitution these crimes arguments against ecclesiastical law and ecclesiastical power. could be—indeed had to be—punished by the state: not as Truth can’t be in conflict with truth. What divine law wrong opinion, not as unbelief, but as misdeeds, outrageous commands can’t be abolished by reason, which is equally crimes against the state, aimed at abolishing or weakening divine. the lawgiver’s authority and thereby undermining the state What was punished was not unbelief, not false doctrine itself. And yet how leniently even these high crimes were and error, but outrageous offences against the majesty of the punished! With what overflowing indulgence for human lawgiver, impudent misdeeds against the state’s basic laws weakness! According to an unwritten law, corporal and and the civil constitution. And ·even· these were punished capital punishment could not be inflicted unless two cred- only •when the sacrilege exceeded all bounds in its unruli- ible witnesses testified that the criminal had been warned ness, and came close to rebellion; •when the criminal wasn’t with the citation of the law and the threat of the prescribed afraid to have the law quoted to him by two fellow-citizens, punishment; indeed, for corporal or capital punishment to be threatened with punishment and, indeed, to accept the the criminal had to have explicitly acknowledged the pun- punishment and commit the crime in their presence. Here ishment, accepted it and committed the crime immediately the religious villain becomes an outrageous desecrator of afterwards in the presence of those same witnesses. How majesty, a state criminal. Moreover, as the rabbis expressly rare must executions have been under such stipulations, state, With the destruction of the Temple, all corporal and and how many an opportunity must the judges have had capital punishments ceased to be legal, and so did monetary of avoiding the sad necessity of pronouncing a sentence of fines that are only national. Perfectly in accordance with death over their fellow-creature and fellow-image of God! An my principles, and inexplicable without them! ·With the executed man is, according to Scripture, a reproach to God destruction of the Temple· the civil bonds of the nation [apparently referring to Deuteronomy 21:23]. How the judges must were dissolved; religious offences were no longer crimes have hesitated, investigated, and thought of excuses before against the state; and the religion itself knows of no penalty

57 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 19. Judaism and civil law except the one the repentant sinner voluntarily imposes on are raving, or that you are getting practice in overwhelming himself. It knows of no coercion; the staff it works with the heart of a prude by means of Platonic caresses. And is leniency, and it works only on mind and heart. Thus a typical worldly politician won’t understand you either, if the rabbis; try to explain this rationally without help from you speak to him of the simplicity and moral grandeur of my principles! [In that passage ‘staff’ translates Stab. This echoes that original constitution. Just as the ‘lover’ knows nothing a German idiom that Mendelssohn used two paragraphs back, in which of love but the satisfaction of common lust, the politician über x den Stab brechen—literally ‘to break the staff over x’—means ‘to discusses statesmanship purely in terms of power, liquidity, sentence x to death’.] trade, the balance of power, and population; and religion is to him the lawgiver’s means for keeping the unruly man in check, and the priest’s means to suck him dry and consume 19. Judaism and civil law his marrow. I hear many readers asking: I had stop you adopting the false point of view from ‘Why do you go on at such length about something which we customarily look at the true interest of human that is very well known? Judaism was a hierocracy society. [= ‘a government by priests’], an ecclesiastical government, the next sentence: That’s why I haven’t named the object to a priestly state—a theocracy, if you will. We already you, but have tried to represent it with its properties and know the arrogance of such a constitution.’ details. No! All these technical terms—·‘theocracy’ etc.·—put the topic in a false light that I must avoid. We always want what Mendelssohn is probably geting at: That’s why I haven’t to classify, to sort things into pigeonholes. Once we know brought Judaism—the object of my present discussion— what pigeonhole a thing goes into, we’re satisfied, however under any of the labels that theorists of politics use, but incomplete our concept of it may be. But why do you want have simply tried to tell you what it is like. a generic label; for an individual thing that •has no genus, If we look at true politics directly, we shall see God in it. . . . •refuses to be stacked with anything, •can’t be put under the I have said that the Mosaic constitution didn’t last long same rubric with anything else? This constitution existed in its original purity. As early as the time of the prophet only once; call it the Mosaic constitution, i.e. by its proper Samuel, the edifice developed a crack that widened more and name. It has disappeared, and only God knows where and more until the whole thing fell to pieces. The nation asked for when there will again be something like it. a visible flesh-and-blood king as its ruler, perhaps •because Just as according to Plato there is an earthly and also the priesthood had already begun to abuse its authority a heavenly love, there is also an earthly and a heavenly among the people (as Scripture reports about the sons of the politics, so to speak. Take a womaniser, a seducer, such as High Priest), or perhaps •because they were dazzled by the are met with in the streets of every big city, and speak to splendor of some neighbouring royal household. Anyway, him of •Solomon’s Song of Songs or of •the love of Adam and they demanded a king such as all other peoples have. The Eve before the Fall, as Milton describes it. He’ll think you prophet ·Moses·, aggrieved by this, pointed out to them •the

58 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 19. Judaism and civil law nature of a human king who had his own requirements and the climate ·of opinion· and the times make the ob- could enlarge them at will, and •how hard it would be to servance of your religious laws in some respects more satisfy an infirm mortal to whom the rights of the Deity have irksome than they need to be. been transferred. In vain! The people persisted in their Nevertheless, persevere; remain unflinchingly at the post resolution, got their wish and experienced what the prophet assigned to you by Providence, and endure everything that had threatened them with. With that the constitution was happens to you as your lawgiver foretold long ago. undermined, the unity of ·religious and governmental· in- In fact, I don’t see how anyone born into the House of terests was abolished. State and religion were no longer Jacob can conscientiously free himself from the law. [In the the same, and a conflict of duties was no longer impossible. following great sentence, it is Mendelssohn who twice italicises vielleicht Such conflicts can’t have happened often, as long as the king = ‘perhaps’.] We’re allowed to •reflect on the law, to •inquire himself a native of his land and also obeyed the fatherland’s into its spirit, and in odd places where the lawgiver gave laws. But now track the events through all sorts of ups and no reason to •surmise a reason which perhaps depended on downs and changes, through many good and bad regimes, that time and place and those circumstances, and which God-fearing and godless ones, down to the sad period in perhaps may open the way to a change ·in the law· for a which the founder of the Christian religion gave the cautious different time, place, and circumstances—if the Supreme instruction: Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what Lawgiver consents to tell us His will on this matter, making is God’s. Obvious opposition—a conflict of duties! The state it known was under foreign dominion, and received its orders from •in as clear a voice, foreign gods, as it were, while the home religion still survived, •in as public a manner, and keeping some of its influence on civil life. Here is demand •as far beyond all doubt and ambiguity against demand, claim against claim. ‘To whom shall we as He did when He first gave the law. As long as this give? Whom shall we obey?’ Bear both burdens—went the doesn’t happen—as long as we can’t point to any such clearly advice—as well as you can; serve two masters with patience genuine exemption from the law—we can’t argue our way and devotion. Give to Caesar, and give to God too! To each out of the strict obedience we owe to the law. ·However his own, since the unity of interests is now destroyed! glitteringly good an argument or theory may seem to be·, Even now that is the best advice that can be given to the reverence for God draws a line between theory and practice House of Jacob [see Glossary]. Adapt yourselves to the Sitten that no conscientious man may cross. So I repeat my earlier [see Glossary] and the constitution of the land in which you [page 50] exclamation: have been placed; but hold fast to the religion of your fathers Weak and shortsighted is the eye of man! Who can too. Bear both burdens as well as you can! It is true that on say: ‘I have entered God’s sanctuary, seen the whole the one hand of his plan, and can determine the measure, goal, and the burden of civil life is made heavier for you because limits of his purposes’? of the religion to which you remain faithful, I may conjecture, but not pass judgment or act according to and on the other hand my conjecture. – If in human affairs I am not allowed to act

59 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 20. The unity trap contrary to the law on the strength of my own conjectures out to agree completely with Scripture and also with the and legal web-spinning, without the authority of the lawgiver tradition. If he came to remedy entrenched hypocrisy and or the legal authorities, how much less am I allowed to do sanctimoniousness, he surely wouldn’t have given as his so in divine affairs? Laws that are necessarily connected first example of sanctimoniousness a law that ·he thought· with •the possession of the land ·of Israel· and with •the should be repealed and abolished. ·Why not?· Because by institutions governing it highlighting the law in that way he was authorizing it. Rather, his entire conduct as well as that of his disciples in the early the final clause: carry their exemption with them. period is illuminated by the rabbinic principle: He who is probably meaning: If you take a law of that sort to Germany not born into the law need not bind himself to the law; but he (say), you thereby free yourself of any obligation to obey who is born into the law must live according to the law, and it. The law has, as it were, carried its exemption with it to die according to the law. If his followers later on thought Germany. differently, believing that Jews who accepted their teaching Without temple and priesthood, and outside Judea, there’s could be released from the law, this surely happened without no place for •sacrifices or •laws of purification or •religious his authority. taxes, because these all depend on the possession of the land. But personal commandments, duties imposed on 20. The unity trap a son of Israel without regard to the Temple service and property-ownership in Palestine, must—as far as we can And you, dear brothers, dear fellow-men, who follow the see—be observed strictly according to the words of the law, teachings of Jesus—should you find fault with us for doing until it pleases the Most High to set our conscience at rest what the founder of your religion did himself, and confirmed and tell us in a clear voice and publicly that those laws have by his authority? Should you believe that you can’t love us been rescinded. in return as brothers and unite with us as citizens as long as This is obviously a case of: Man can’t pull apart things we •are outwardly distinguished from you by the ceremonial that God has joined together. Even if one of us converts to law, •don’t eat with you, •don’t marry you—which as far the Christian religion, I don’t see how he can believe that as we can see the founder of your religion wouldn’t have he is setting his conscience free and ridding himself of the done himself nor allowed us to do? – We can’t suppose this yoke of the law. Jesus of Nazareth was never heard to say regarding Christian-minded men, but if this is and continues that he had come to release the House of Jacob from the to be your true conviction; if you won’t allow civil union law! Indeed, he explicitly said the opposite, and what’s unless we depart from the laws that we still consider binding more he did the opposite. He obeyed not only the law on us; then of Moses but also the ordinances of the rabbis. Some of •we’re sorry to have to tell you that we would rather do the speeches and acts ascribed to him •seem to contradict without civil union; this, but this is merely an at-first-glance •seeming. When •that friend of mankind Dohm [see page 27] will have his speech and conduct are closely examined, they turn written in vain, and

60 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 20. The unity trap

•everything will remain in the melancholy condition in souls who make this proposal are ready to go to work; they which it is now, or in which your love of mankind may want to come together as negotiators and make the humane think it proper to place it. effort We can’t yield on this matter; but if we are honest we can •to bring about a compromise between the faiths, still •love you as brothers and •beseech you as brothers to •to bargain for truths as if they were rights or mere lighten our burdens as much as you can. Regard us, if not merchandise, as brothers and fellow-citizens, at least as fellow-men and •to demand, offer, bribe, bluster and apologise, sur- fellow-inhabitants of the land. Help us to become better men prise and outwit, and better fellow-inhabitants, and let us—as far as the times until the parties shake hands and the contract for the happi- and the circumstances permit—be partners in enjoying the ness of the human race can be written down! Of those who rights of humanity. We can’t in good conscience depart from reject such an enterprise as fanciful and impracticable, many the law; what good would it do you to have fellow-citizens still speak of the union of faiths as a desirable state of affairs, without conscience? and deplore the human race’s inability to scale this pinnacle ‘But how in this way will the prophecy come true that some of happiness through its own efforts. – Friends of mankind, day there will be only one shepherd and one flock?’ beware! Don’t listen uncritically to such sentiments. They [That question quotes John 10:16. Its display as a separate paragraph could be snares that enfeebled fanaticism wants to set for is Mendelssohn’s.] Dear well-meaning brothers, don’t let your- freedom of conscience. You know that this enemy of the good selves be fooled! For the entire flock to be under the care of has many forms—the lion’s fury and the lamb’s meekness, this omnipresent shepherd it doesn’t have to graze in •one the dove’s simplicity and the snake’s cunning—it can take pasture or enter and leave the master’s house through •one any shape it likes in order to achieve its bloodthirsty pur- door. This isn’t what the shepherd wants and it isn’t good for poses. Since your beneficent efforts have robbed fanaticism the thriving of the flock. Has there been a conceptual error of overt power, it may be putting on the mask of meekness here or was it a deliberate attempt to confuse? You’re told so as to deceive you; it puts up a show of brotherly love that a •union of faiths is the shortest way to the brotherly and human tolerance while secretly making the chains with love and brotherly tolerance that you kindhearted folk so which it intends to hold down •reason, preparatory to hurling ardently desire. There are people who want to persuade you •it back into the cesspool of barbarism from which you have that if only we all had •one faith we would no longer hate begun to pull it up. one another for reasons of faith, reasons of difference in [This paragraph was a footnote.] Atheism, too, has its fanati- ·religious· opinion; that then religious hatred and the spirit cism, as sad experience teaches. True, it might remain of persecution would be torn up by their roots and destroyed; harmless unless inner atheism is mixed in with it. But that the lash would be taken from the hand of hypocrisy and external, overt atheism can also become fanatical—a fact that the sword from the hand of fanaticism, and the happy days is as undeniable as it is hard to understand. An atheist who would arrive, in which it is said that the wolf shall dwell with wants to be consistent must always act out of selfishness; the lamb, and the leopard beside the kid etc. – The gentle and selfishness won’t lead him to propagate atheism rather

61 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 20. The unity trap than keeping the secret to himself; and yet atheists have in these modest, purified words! He’s disturbing the peace! been seen to preach their doctrine with the fanatical zeal, To the stake with him! raging and persecuting when their preaching didn’t get a Brothers! If you care for true piety, let us not pretend to favourable reception. And zeal is frightful when the zealot is agree where Providence’s aim is obviously diversity. None an avowed atheist, when innocence falls into the hands of a of us thinks and feels exactly like his fellow-man; so why tyrant who fears everything except God. do we want to deceive each other with delusive words? We Don’t see this as a merely imaginary fear, born of already do this alas! in our daily doings, in our conversations, hypochondria [here = ‘a pathological tendency to see minor symptoms that aren’t especially important; why would we also do it in as serious’]. If a union of faiths did ever come about, its only matters concerning our temporal and eternal welfare, our consequences would be disastrous for reason and freedom whole destiny? Why in the most important concerns of our of conscience. Suppose that people do come to terms with life should we put on masks to make ourselves unrecog- one another about what formula of faith to introduce and nizable to each other, given that God for his own reasons establish, devising symbols that none of the religious parties has stamped everyone with his own features? Doesn’t this now dominant in Europe could find fault with. What would amount to doing our best to resist Providence, to frustrate that accomplish? Everyone thinking alike concerning reli- if possible the purpose of creation? Isn’t this to deliberately gious truths? No-one who has any conception of the nature contravene our calling, our destiny in this life and the next? of the human mind would draw that conclusion. The only – Rulers of the earth! If an insignificant fellow-inhabitant agreement would be in the words, in the formula. That’s of the earth is allowed to lift up his voice to you: don’t what the unifiers of faiths join forces to achieve: they want trust the advisers who try to sweet-talk you into undertaking to squeeze something out of the concepts in some places, to something so harmful. They are either blind themselves, and broaden the web of words in other places, making the words don’t see the enemy of mankind lurking in ambush, or they so uncertain and broad that intrinsically different concepts are trying to blind you. If you listen to them we’ll lose our can be forced into them, just barely. Everyone would then noblest treasure, the freedom to think. For the sake of your be attaching his own meaning to the agreed-upon words; happiness and ours, a union of faiths is not tolerance; it is would this be the proud achievement of uniting men’s faiths, the exact opposite of true tolerance! For the sake of your bringing the flock under a single shepherd? Oh, if this happiness and ours, don’t use your powerful authority universal hypocrisy had any purpose, I’m afraid it would be •to turn some eternal truth that isn’t essential to civic intended as a first step towards putting the now liberated happiness into a law, spirit of man back into prison. The shy thing would be sure •to turn some religious opinion that is a matter of enough to let itself be captured and bridled. Tying the faith to indifference to the state into an ordinance of the land! symbols, belief to words, doing this as modestly and pliantly Pay heed to men’s •doings and •allowings; bring them before as you please but finally getting the thing written down and the tribunal of wise laws, and leave us •thought and •speech. established, once and for all: then woe to the poor man who The Father of us all gave us thought and speech as an comes the next day and who finds something to criticise even inalienable heritage, granting them to us as an immutable

62 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 20. The unity trap right. If the link between •the legal system and •opinion is someone doesn’t disturb public happiness and acts properly too deeply dug in and the time is not yet ripe for abolishing towards the civil laws, towards you and his fellow-citizens, it completely without great risk, try at least to mitigate as let him •speak as he thinks, •call on God in his own way much as you can its pernicious inﬂuence, and to put wise or that of his fathers, and •seek eternal salvation where he limits to prejudice that has grown gray with age.13 At least thinks he will ﬁnd it. Let no-one in your states be a searcher pave the way for a fortunate posterity to move to that height of hearts and a judge of thoughts; let no-one assume a right of culture, that universal tolerance of man for which reason that the Omniscient has reserved to himself alone! If we still sighs in vain! Don’t reward or punish any doctrine, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s then you should give to God don’t tempt or bribe anyone to adopt any religious opinion! If what is God’s! Love truth! Love peace!

13 Alas, we already hear the Congress in America striking up the old tune and speaking of a dominant religion. [‘This refers to a bill submitted to the American Congress in 1783–84 saying: ‘The Christian religion shall. . . .be the established religion of this Commonwealth.’ James Madison caused the bill to fail. (Source: A. Altmann, in the Brandeis U.P. edition of this work, p. 240)]